/ Mark Frauenfelder / 11:59 am Tue Oct 13, 2009

Snow kite boarder gets carried away by kite



Scary video of a kiteboarder hanging on for his life as a kite lifts him high into the air.

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  1. And that’s why I’ll never go kiteboarding… unless an expert can convince me why this would never happen to me as long as I followed a set of basic rules, or something like that.

    But until then, it’s Terra Firma for me.

    1. Pull your safety before you get pulled 40 feet in the air (IE: when you cant control your kite and get lifted 5 feet) and the kite loses all power. Also, don’t do it on top of a ROCK WINDY MOUNTAINTOP (Im sticking to warm water for that reason ;)

  2. All newer harnesses feature a safety quick release so you can cut the kite away before you get yourself into something like that.

    1. when shit happens that quickly, you don’t have time to pull the quick release… cuz when you’re 20 feet up, you think you’ll come right down, but then you’re 100 feed up and you’re SOL.

  3. Are we sure this is legit? I’m amazed that he hung on for so long under such stress. Heck, I’m amazed he didn’t let go right away, but if we were looking for common sense, we wouldn’t be looking in this crowd, would we?

  4. That looked pretty hairy when they zoomed out and there was no landscape in view. The videographer sounds like they turned into a Muppet towards the end there. Any clue what they were whooping?

    1. Literal translation is “Oh prostitute! Oh prostitute of his mother! Are you alright dude? Hey Luke are you alright?”. Typical example of refined French lyricism

    2. The videographer sounds like they turned into a Muppet towards the end there.

      Dood.

      I would be running around in a circle, hands waving above my head, like a hysterical, non-felt, Kermit the frog if that ever happened to one of my friends. Seriously, flipping out like a puppeteer with Parkinsons were holding both my wrist-sticks in one hand.

      Either that or catatonic with horror.

      I’m petrified of heights and falling so this strikes really close to home, though.

  7. They are screaming French curse words and at the end asking the snowboarder (Jean-Luc it sounds like) if he is alright or not.

  8. Seriously dude, at the point where you feel yourself taking off the ground, YOU DROP THE FUCKING KITE!!! JUST DROP IT!

    1. At least around the area I live in, and from what it looks like from the video, most people (and this guy) are clipped in to the kite to avoid losing grip and having it blow away.

  10. What some people do for fun. If the video would have shown him being carried away into the distance and then gone to black…that would have made a helluva movie. OH wait, that was real? Never mind. Glad he was okay.

  11. Though the fellow landed safely, it’s situations like this where carrying a knife would be handy.

  12. That’s so cool. I’m glad he didn’t get seriously injured, but in a way that just looks completely awesome. So scary.

  14. Seriously looks like a beginner playing around that got caught in an updraft. Like has been mentioned before, every kite made in the last 8 years has a quick release that will not only disconnect you from the kite but also bring it crashing down (in most cases)

    Looks like he freaked because of brick wall and didn’t have the instinct to cut loose.

    @comment 3: He’s attached to the kite, no real hanging on required.

  15. I think that’s exactly how I would sound if I witnessed that, and I don’t even know what language that is.

    (ok, ok, so I read the comments, but when I saw the video I didn’t know!)

  17. I kitesnowboard and that is merely a case of inexperience and failure to properly use safety equipment.

    *Yes, you are actually attached to the kite
    *Most current (& as old as 4-5 years) kites have multiple safety systems that were not used in order for this to occur.

    Occasionally, yes, situations will occur where even in the two seconds it can take to get detached, you can be UP. If this frightens you, you can still kite. Just fly unhooked(you’ll have blazing arms and upper body!) and/or hook in (Loop, chicken loop) but sans the “donkey” that holds it in.

  18. “”Oh prostitute! Oh prostitute of his mother!”

    European curses never made sense to me. On the other hand George Carlin’s seven swear words make sense.

    1. American curses are pretty weird when you break them down. I’m sure “motherf—er” makes for some headscratching translations.

      My default swear seems to be “c-ckbag.” Frankly, I don’t even know how I’d define it, much less translate it.

      My Muppet screaming in this situation would have sounded something like: “f-ckf-ckf-ckf-ckf-ck…” which might translate as: “sexsexsexsexsexsex…” Not exactly the spirit of the moment.

  19. With that type of kite, it’s not possible to just let go of it. The handle is only for steering- all of the “pull” of the kite is transfered to an anchor just above your hips, right at about the body’s center of gravity.

    Even with the quick release there, you’d have to be pretty quick thinking… if you hesitate for even a moment before pulling the release, you’re looking at broken bones.

  21. Oh, well…it seems some of these posts don’t realize that he was ATTACHED to the kite through a chest/body harness. Newer ones allow for quick (Trust me a relative word) release. Just “letting go” would mean that he would have even less control because he would have just let go of the CONTROL leads. He was off the ground pretty quickly, and keeping a cool(ish) head and using the leads gives him a higher chance of keeping the kite strings from tangling and allowing him to drop to his DEATH. Keeping ahold of them increases the chance that he will land with little or no damage.

    In a slightly related topic, I just read “Grown-ups are Dumb” (No offense). Interesting how these two arrive in the same Boingboing day….

  22. I kiteboarded for a few years. A few fun facts for non-kiteboarders:

    – As others have mentioned, you’re attached. There are safety release systems, but you use those when going sideways into rocks, not up because…

    – …letting go when you get lofted is a sure fire way to get really really hurt. You can’t let go fast enough, and usually by the time your brain figures out what the hell happened you’re already at a height that will likely kill you if you drop…

    – …which would be tragic considering you where just hanging onto a giant parachute. Large powerkites behave a little like a paraglider without enough lift.

    – That dude is *extremely* fucking lucky he’s alive. Mountain winds are very very very very unpredictable, and kiteboarding on anything other than flat fields and 3 meters of powder covering everything is dumb dumb dumb. It’s blind luck he didn’t pick up speed and slam into the side of sharp point rocks, only to be further raked across them as the kite picked up the slack again.

    – Also, yes, that’s quite real, and quite possible.

  23. Never having done anything like this, but having grown up in mountains, that was the first thing to cross my mind: what kind of moron attaches himself to a parachute near a mountain?

    Wind gusts can come up with zero warning.

  24. That’s incredibly impressive! I didn’t even know they got enough snow to do stuff like that in Algeria.

  25. The guy is swearing ‘merde’ not ‘mère.’ it’s “oh shit!”

    This is a sport I don’t want to try.

  26. So it’s “oh prostitute, oh prostitute of his shit”? Kinda weird, but clearly a string of cursing.

    1. He (probably) says ‘Putain de merde’ or ‘shitty whore’ but like most curses, it isn’t supposed to make literal sense.

  27. I love the part halfway through where the guy with the camera starts screaming like a little girl. Personally, I would have expected that from the guy up on the kite.

  29. No, it’s not “prostitute of mother” (putain de mere) it’s “shitty prostitute” (putain de merde). Even more refined.

    1. I think it’s putain … sa mere. Putain means prostitute. Sa mere is something French Arabs say (or gangsters or whatever) that is very difficult to translate but might be something like “Fucking A” or “Of snap” (though it can be directed towards people).

  30. FWIW, I’m kind of interested in the way different cultures curse. Germans and Scandinavians seem to do a little more religious cursing than the rest of us, ‘jaevla’ (demon) for example. Latin cultures do comparison to animals – cabrón, buey, etc. I asked some Chinese friends of mine what a common curse is in Chinese, they said calling someone ‘turtle’ is pretty harsh. I still don’t get why that’s rude; they got embarrassed and wouldn’t explain.

    1. Consider a turtle retracting it’s head, and you’ve got a useful insult for at least half the population.

  31. ‘Motherfucker’ had me scratching my head and run into a serious fight once even. I was understanding it like I was some guy who would fuck his mother: way past admissible.
    ‘Putain’ translates better as ‘whore’ than ‘prostitute’ but has lost that literal sense, just like ‘fuck you’ shouldn’t get anyone’s hopes up. It is a rude exclamation of incredulity or of being exceeded, nothing more. ‘Putain de merde’ does not translate to ‘shitty whore’ at all but is much closer to ‘I can’t believe that that shit is happening’.

    1. ‘fuck you’ shouldn’t get anyone’s hopes up.

      Oops. I guess I’ll stop stalking my neighbor.

  34. The name of the guy isn’t “jean-luc”, or “luc” (even though I thought it was, at first). It’s “malik”; as indicated in the title of the video.

    As for swear words, he’s saying “putain” (whore), which is used in French as Americans use “fuck”. You can improve a swear by adding “de sa mère” (of his mother), so the swear becomes “putain de sa mére” (whore of his mother), which I think is no stranger than “motherfucker”.

  36. As others have pointed out, mountain air currents can be VERY unpredictable. This guy is incredibly lucky that he managed to land his kite (it’s really an undersized parachute without the aerodynamic design) without getting hurt.

    One would think that people who try this sort of thing might try reading a few resources on safety first.

    This is how people get the darwin award.

  37. I’ve been kiting for about 4 years. My opinion is that it can be a risky sport; like surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking, etc… (which I also do). It’s definitely not for everyone. There are many safety features that help reduce the risk of injury – there’s a line that can be pulled to collapse and land the kite, there’s a thing to pull to detach the kite from you, and many harnesses have kite knives built into them. One needs to practice with this safety equipment until it becomes burned into one’s muscle memory as a reflex. I’m not sure, however, about if this kiter had time to react. It looks like it happened pretty fast. There was very little wind and then all of sudden an updraft came. I’m wondering – did these guys know that updrafts occured at this spot, and if so were they trying to catch them? I’m not saying this is smart… just wondering if that’s what they were doing.

    I’m also wondering about the conditions. It’s hard to see a lot of the sky, but doesn’t it look a bit ominous? As a kiter, you need to be safe about when you kite – don’t go out in storms, for example.

  39. This video lends credence to “The Kite,” a Patricia Highsmith story I read last week her Selected Stories.

    In it, a lonely 10-12 y.o. boy buries his sorrows in a kite building hobby. Eventually he concocts a monster kite, 6′ x 9′ and goes to fly it from the hilltop where his brother is buried. He gets some serious air and tragedy/comedy (it’s hard to separate the two in Highsmith) ensue.

    In the same volume are “Engine Horse,” “Woodrow Wilson’s Necktie,” “Not one of Us,” and “Hamsters vs. Websters,” among the most unnerving stories I have ever read.

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