Staking On The Ice

[Draftnik]

How do the big kites get staked down in the ice and snow?

I might be a bit too late to get the answer to that in time for this weekend, but thought I'd ask while I'm thinking of it.

[TheBigKiteGuy]

Use an auger to drill a hole in the ice. Take a piece of 2x4 (I cut an 8 foot stud into three pieces) and wrap a loop of rope around it. Push the 2x4 though the hole so
that it works like a toggle bolt with the rope coming out of the hole. Tie off to the rope. I make my own anchors so I can be sure of the rope strength.

[Chris]

Does the edge of the ice hole, put any stress on the line/webbing? Or do you put some sort of strain relief on the line?

And how thick does the ice have to be, so as not to pull out?

[TheBigKiteGuy]

I have never seen any abrasion on the line, however I subscribe to the overkill school of rope selection, I used 1800# climbing rope this weekend which has a woven sheath over the inner core which provides most of the strength. The bigger problem is if you don't loop the rope all of way around the anchor board. This weekend some people were flying on anchors that were a single large loop rather than a small loop all the way the board, tacked in place, extending to a larger loop that goes through the ice. The single loop tacked on one side of the board, gives you the "opportunity" to get the board under the ice without the rope being around the board, just being held by the tack. This happened at Color the Wind and resulted in a pilot kite and a spin sock in a tree. I am the only ice flier I know to be anal enough to supply my own anchors with the double loop system and rope that I know the strength of. But then with high winds and turbulence, I was never worried about an anchor failing.

I am comfortable with ten inches or more of ice. However, I have not data on ice strength to back this up. All of the research on ice strength that I could find deals with a downward force, where the ice is strengthened by the fact is is floating on water. I could not find any data on the type of thing we are doing, pulling the ice up.