Those who love extreme winter sports will have adrenaline for a few days, namely until the end of this week. The reason is that Winter Air Sport 2018 Festival has started on February 21, on the Sinaia ski area. All those who wish to enjoy a real show of the extreme sports are expected on the Valea Soarelui Slope until February 25, at the 11th edition of one of the most important snowkite contests in the Eastern Europe. The competition is organized by the Sinaia Municipality, ACS rally Spirit Sports Club and Kitemania; competitors from Romania and from abroad will attend the contest and the demonstrations. Being already a tradition, the festival of the extreme winter air sports, Winter Air Sports 2018, will be held at the highest elevation in Sinaia, Cota 2000.
Snowkiting is an active and attractive sport, accessible to all the ages, whose popularity is exponentially increasing at national and international level. Snowkiting is an extreme winter sport which takes skiing and snowboarding to a totally different level. It’s the winter witesurfing, a water sport that combines surf and paraglider. The lovers of this sports use a kite or a parachute as a mean of towing, and a pair of skis or a snowboard to easily slide on snow. Snowkiting is different from the other alpine sports by allowing those who practice this type of movement to go in the direction they want, even upwards on the hill. The festival’s program included a day for training, and then two days of contest; the awarding ceremony is going to be held in the fourth and the last day of the festival. As in the previous editions, the event will end with a party in the snow. The public has free and permanent access on the entire area of the event, except the competition route.
As announced by the organizers, the contest takes place on the Bucegi Plateau, at an altitude of 2000 meters, the start point being near Dichiu Chalet. The route also reaches Babele, via Piatra Arsa Chalet and back. The route has several check points that must be ticked in order to reach the finish. It was mentioned that this competition will be held regardless of the weather conditions, which allows participants to prove their skills in different wind and bad weather conditions. Certain rules have been established, namely all participants must have experience in snowkiting and a proper physical condition. In fact, participants’ enrollment in the competition was made by filling in a statement on their own responsibility.
“During the contest, participants can face different types of snow, different visibility from one area to another, and obstacles like rocks, junipers. For this reason, participants must be equipped with: kite, tour ski or splitboard, a coat for bad weather, a phone or a radio station, to announce possible problems. We recommend you to have two kites of different sizes, one for low wind (2 to 5 m/s), and another for strong wind (+15 m/s). Ski or snowboard are allowed. Each participant must wear a helmet, being allowed to use GPS, too” were the recommendations of the festival’s organizers for participants.
It was mentioned that Short Race will be an on sight plateau race, for which a separate awarding ceremony will be held, in order to give a chance to those having a snowboard; those who wish can continue in the Full Race endurance race. Full Race will be a long race, which also includes tour skiing slopes.
