Snowkiting Gliding Fatality

[windrupted]

RIP, this sucks.
If you heartless monday morning quarterbacks can keep your one-off criticisms to yourselves for at least a few days, that would be great.

I feel exactly the same as Matt does here. I can't help but imagine the victim's family, say for instance his poor distraught mother trying to make some sense out of her terrible loss, so she searches around and finds our resident know-it-alls proclaiming what he did was wrong. I can't do big glides myself due to my fear of height exposure, but seeing Chasta soaring over the trees at Skyline is what brought me to this wonderful sport. Yeah it was only a matter of time till somebody bought it, but I know it could have me, easily. I don't even see why you need to post every fatality up on here, there are some great private access snow kite spots we ride and we don't need the property owners to worry about liability any more than they already do. Just empathize with the victims families and STFU. Would you go to the guy's funeral and pontificate like that?

[alamos_kiter]

RIP, this sucks.
If you heartless monday morning quarterbacks can keep your one-off criticisms to yourselves for at least a few days, that would be great.

I feel exactly the same as Matt does here. I can't help but imagine the victim's family, say for instance his poor distraught mother trying to make some sense out of her terrible loss, so she searches around and finds our resident know-it-alls proclaiming what he did was wrong. I can't do big glides myself due to my fear of height exposure, but seeing Chasta soaring over the trees at Skyline is what brought me to this wonderful sport. Yeah it was only a matter of time till somebody bought it, but I know it could have me, easily. I don't even see why you need to post every fatality up on here, there are some great private access snow kite spots we ride and we don't need the property owners to worry about liability any more than they already do. Just empathize with the victims families and STFU. Would you go to the guy's funeral and pontificate like that?

As I'm being addressed as an insufferable know-it-all, heartless monday morning quarterback, and told to shut the f*** up, I think that deserves an answer.

What you propose is: close your eyes, don't talk about it, it was not me, so if I ignore it, nothing has happened.

In consequence, I can't help but imagine another victim's family, say for instance a poor distressed mother, trying to make some sense out of her terrible loss.

She had bought the kite her son killed himself with for his birthday. Now she's suffering the next terrible shock, being told by the coroner that the gear her son used was not fit for what he was doing - gliding. In disbelief, she asks the manufacturer of the gear, and is being told the same.

She searches around on an international kite forum, and finds that, apart from "RIP that sucks, bummer, condolences, all's well because he died doing what he really liked, he left wife and 2 kids could you donate please", nobody of the experienced kiters had the balls or brains to reflect on their practice, and tell the noobs that a kite is not made for gliding or tow up. "It is so tempting to fly, and looks so easy. If only one person had ever mentioned that this is the wrong gear for flying, I would have bought the right gear for my son, anything, and he would be alive today."

I admire Chasta for his skill and daring, as I admire many people doing outstanding stuff. There is some stuff which is obviously extremely dangerous, i.e. you are not easily lured into jumping off a 60m drop with your free riding skis, or climbing the Eiger north face free solo. And there is some stuff which is not obviously dangerous, but dangerous all the same, like a kite tow-up on a windless day, over water. If we didn't talk about it, we still would be without QR.

& out.