The trip to Foilfest’s Snowtime 5 event

With the pending release of some new toys we needed pictures and video to present the new kites, and because it’s snowkites that are coming we needed to go snowkiting, tough job . So with the mission of getting footage and pics we contacted PL teamrider Yann Lhuisset who has his own video production company and because we we’re going to Marienberg we asked some of our German riders; Florian Giehl & Joey Oldenbürger if they wanted to come along.

The idea was simple, attend Snowtime! , a yearly funevent organized by Foilfest to have some fun, test and demo the new toys (at least the ones we could show to the public) and stay a couple days extra after the event to do the necessary shootings.

It all turned out a bit different…

The ominous skies didn't deter the riders at Foilfest Snowtime

Foilfest Snowtime Friday

Yann and Marijn loaded the undercover van with all our gear and the new to be released kites and left the office for an 8 hour drive up to Mariënberg. After the Satnav sent us on a scenic route which wasn’t exactly planned and took some extra time we arrived at the rental home around 18:30 and within half an hour Florian and Joey also arrived, good timing. After we were all settled in we went to the local pub which dubs as the meeting point for everybody attending the Snowtime event. and when we came in we were happy to see lots of familiar faces. Quite hungry after the road we didn’t waste time to order a big and tasty schnitzel and one (or two) of those famous big German beers to wash it down .

Foilfest Snowtime Saturday

After a good night sleep everyone was up and ready around 9 and we set off to the snowkiting spot, which is conveniently located about 5 minutes drive from our home for the week. Winds were around 20 knots and a bit gusty but we were all anxious to play with some of the new toys so we unpacked the new trainer kites to have a go on and see how they perform, small(ish) kites in 20 to 30 knots, woohoo!

Makin' it look cool

And we’ve gotta say that we were pleasantly surprised by the new snowkite trainer [Find a spyshot here] it handled the gusty conditions, it’s stable and feels reliable and it’s just easy and fun to fly. Snow conditions were a bit tricky with a thin layer of iced up snow on top making it somewhat difficult to get upwind, but once out in the field (which is huge!) we could not stop smiling and that on trainerkites! Around 1 o’ clock the wind started to pick up and conditions started to look like a snowstorm so we decided that this 4 hour session was perfect for the day and we headed back to the house because we still had to get groceries and stuff for the next couple days.

Foilfest snowtime Sunday

We arrived on the spot around 10 to find that the conditions again were ‘demanding‘, strong gusty winds that made the snow, no, make that sleet, come in horizontally, hurting exposed bodyparts. We did play around for a while with the trainerkites but even those proved too much to handle in all what mother nature was throwing at us! Forecasts predicted it to be like this for the rest of the day and because these conditions aren’t exactly fun and safe to fly in we decided to go snowboarding in a nearby skiresort, good times and good to see the teamriders having a blast doing something different.

Snowkiting at night: Yann ripping it up in the dark

Snowkiting fotoshoot: a grey Monday

We we’re checking forecasts again and again and it looked better windwise, 15 to 20 knots so we got up early and went to the spot only to again find grey and ominous skies, not exactly skies that you’d want in your product pictures. But we started to film the setting up of the kite and all the other things we needed and after about 4 hours of work it started snowing again so we decided to head back to the house to see the results of our shootings. We sort of got what we needed but well, grey and unattractive skies are just not good enough. The afternoon saw more of the same so we scratched the filming and went for fun instead, with me shooting a pic here and there while trying to keep the camera snowfree.

Lower winds meant Joey immediately got out the Escape

Joey was finally happy because the lower winds allowed him to fly the new 13m Peter Lynn Escape kite and right from the launch he was throwing down some of his technical tricks, pretty cool.

Getting into the groove

Florian pulled a toy out of the van that we needed to test, unfortunately we can’t yet talk about it but I’ll suffice to say that it only needs some minor tweaking to get the perfect snowkite

Another snowkiting photoshoot opportunity on tuesday?

Daniel from Foilfest really wanted to test the new Twinskin so we met in the afternoon for a quick taster session which was pretty cool (Thanks for meeting up with us Daniel!). Seeing that kite fly and perform as it did was just awesome allthough I should have taken a bigger size to test, for some proper airtime .

Florian throwing down on the new Arc

All in all we had an awesome time, it was great to see the teamriders getting along and having fun (even with the language barrier ) , it was cool to see all the guys from Foilfest again (and doing crazy nightly sessions )