014 LAUNCH Armin Harich pushes the envelope by paragliding with his kite. 018 411 Alliance Productions preparing to release epic wave film. 024 SHOPTALK Hawaiian Ocean Sports: The first kiteboarding shop in the USA. 030 COMING FULL CIRCLE Kiteboarding pioneer Cory Roeseler talks about the past and future of kiting. European snowkite photographer Gus Hurst shot our amazing uphill kite cover on assignment in Switzerland, while Frederick Pattou contributed to our 044 THE KING CLOSES COURT Exposed section with sessions like this of Matt Taggart and Rob Whitall. Maui delivers in final King of the Air. 048 MAUI: MY FIRST TRIP TO THE MOTHERLAND KBMAG’s Paul Lang hits Hawaii. 060 GLOBETROTTING Photographer Gus Hurst travels the globe on snowkite adventure. 068 ACADEMY Back to Basics with Trip Forman of Real Kiteboarding. 070 LEESHAI’S LAUNCH One of the biggest jumps of the year broke down step by step. 074 ANALYZE THIS Six kite specific surfboard lines reviewed. 9 PROJECT CORPUS Have you ever had that picture in your mind of that dream place you wanted to live? Five car garage, triple level, blinged out mansion with a Jacuzzi on each deck, smack dab on a cliff overlooking a long white sand beach which just happens to be the favorite sunbathing spot for all the local girls. Yes that sounds good, but my version of paradise is a bit different. Faced with the reality of living in a light wind spot, I was over chasing wind on planes, long drives searching for it and spending hours of wasted time dreaming of riding. I have traveled the US enough to know where the windy spots are. I woke up one morning and decided I was moving to Texas—well not really moving but rather setting up a satellite office in Corpus Christi, Texas. As I started doing the research, I quickly realized I should have done this a long time ago. Step up! Pull the trigger dude! It’s only an 1800 mile move from Carlsbad, California. No big deal. As I sit here in my new Corpus home office , which sits two car lengths from the Gulf, I watch the sun come up over Mi Casa es su Casa the glassy, smooth water. It is Photo: Ryan Riccitelli moments like these that have made me realize I made the right decision. My body feels like I played tackle football all weekend from too much kiteboarding. I have found my nirvana. The people are nice, the wind blows like snot, the rent is cheap and things move at a pace that would drive most people crazy. As completely opposite of California that Texas is, I love it here. It feels like home. Bucky Ashcraft, Tony Brady, Mike Danish and the rest of the local crew have shown me more spots to ride in the last week with more diversity than I ever thought possible. Saturday I was riding waves at Packery Channel wound out of mind on a 10m taking beatings. If that was not enough, we ended the day by hitting the infamous secret spot, “Buckland,” a glassy slick that spans almost two football fields. It had gotten windier by that point, so I switched to an 8m and was still totally lit. Bucky and I drag raced across the slick clocking speeds I never thought possible. I will publicly say I kicked his ass on my 8 when he was on his 10. That’s right Bucky—you want more of this! So here I sit, sipping coffee, listening to the local band HerbnPipeline.com watching the Gulf Coast get windy. It’s 8 a.m. and today is Groundhog Day. The sun is shining; the wind is starting to pick up. I will do some work and then will call the local crew and find out what new spot we are riding this afternoon. So what is the moral to this story? It is very simple. I never would have thought my paradise would be found in Texas. I had always had this image in my mind of what life would be like if I could have my desk overlook the water and be able to go kiteboarding everyday. Guess what? I am living it. I can honestly tell you it is better than I imagined. So this goes out to all of you fence riders out there. No matter if it is only a week vacation or a temporary move or that little afternoon session; do whatever it takes to give you more water time. Kiteboarding is about sacrifice. I hope this might encourage some of you to get off your asses and make your mental paradise into a reality. You will be all the better for it. Enjoy! EDITOR RYAN RICCITELLI [email protected] ASSISTANT EDITOR PAUL LANG ART DIRECTOR JIM SEMLOR SNOW/CREATIVE EDITOR JAMES BROWN SAFETY EDITOR RICK IOSSI TOWSURF EDITOR ERIK AKISKALIAN TOWSURFER.COM ILLUSTRATOR CAR “LOS” PRESTON EDITORS AT LARGE ALEXiS ROVIRA EDITORIAL INTERN DEVIN CARROLL SENIOR WRITERS Marina Chang, James Brown, Emi Marino, Bucky Ashcroft, Gary Martin, Rick Iossi, Sierra Lake, Jim Semlor EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS Neil Hutchinson, Damien Wright, Joe Bidawid, Lou Wainman, Matt Nuzzo, Trip Forman, Paul Menta, Kevin “Top Hat” Senn, Gregg Gnecco, Jay Crawford, Henry Dupont IV,Sean Driscol, Bill Lee, Jeff Skoll, Paul Lang, Jeff Howard, Cliff Stone, Stefan Ruether, Jeff Burton, Corky Cullen, John Romais, Eric Akiskalian, Ben Wilson, Ruca Chang CONTRIBUTORS Brendan Richards, Gus Hurst, Gregg Gnecco, Gary Martin, Carl Preston, Joe Bidawid, Matt Nuzzo, Felx Pivec, Alexis Rovira, Sierra Lake, John Romais, Greg Norman Jr., Aaron Sales, Jenny Dodge, Kyle Touhey, Jon Modica, Davey Blair, Moe Goold, Bri Chmel, Trip Forman, Jason Slezak, Buster Tronolone, Nate Farran, Emanuela ‘Emi’ Marino, Paul Landry, Eric Marchand/aerosport.ca SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHERS Jim Semlor, Kim Kern, Sierra Lake, Matt Cotton, Paul Javier, Michelle Zuniga, Gus Schmiege, Gregg “Tekko” Gnecco, James Brown, Morton Skoll, Charles Oreve, Stefan Ruether, Josh Marinos, Matt Mink, BOK, Buster Tronolone PHOTOGRAPHY Stephen Whitesell, Tracy Kraft, Clark Merritt, Alexis Rovira, Lance Koudele, Jimmy Lewis, Gary Martin, Bougakow, Victoria Tap, Bertrand Boone, Frederick Pattou, Gust Hurst, realkiteboarding.com, Erik Aeder, Christian Pondella Thanks to all editorial and photography contributors for supporting this magazine! 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All content copyrighted by The Ring Media, inc. dba The Kiteboarder Magazine 12 L DEPARTMENT /$81&+ HARICH lysurfer’s Armin Harich has put a whole new meaning into the term ‘big air,’ at least where kiteboarding is concerned. On September 22, F2005, Armin made kiteboarding and paragliding history by launching his 17m Speed off of a 328-foot hill. A 10-minute soaring flight ensued, and ever since Armin’s phone has been ringing with questions from professional paragliding stunt pilots intrigued by the possibilities of his short lived flight. By Marina Chang Don’t think that you can grab any old kite and take it for a paragliding test flight. Doing so could kill you, or cause serious injury, like paralysis! Armin was a professional paragliding pilot and competed on the World Cup circuit for 10 years before kiteboarding took over his life. His company is also part of Skywalk, a paragliding manufacturer. As a developer, Armin’s job is to push the design envelope. Most designers have crazy, wild ideas that sometimes lead to development while others are better left under lock and key. Armin is not even allowing test stunt pilots, whose jobs are to turn paragliding prototypes into pretzels to see how or if they’ll recover, to test the modified Speed until more R & D has been internally completed. However, he does see paragliding, kiting and possible cross sport developments resulting from his testing. So how did this crazy German come up with the idea to take a kite to the sky in the first place? THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA Bored one day and wanting to try something new, Armin first took the Flysurfer Titan to the air in 2003. He launched it off a 6-foot hill. His flight lasted 5 seconds. At that moment, he thought a hybrid was possible, but the ram air technology was not quite there to make testing safe. He tabled his testing but the idea remained. Two years later, he was again inspired to try paragliding with a kiteboarding kite because of the developments in stability and construction of the Flysurfer Speed. It took him about 15 minutes to make the kite paragliding friendly by modifying the bridle Don’t Try This At Home: system, shortening the line lengths, and adding handles/brakes, needed to steer, maneuver and control the speed and pitch of a paraglider. Armin Harich Paraglides Armin made a test flight off a 98-foot hill.