Red Bull Ragnarok Norway

On Tour

Apr 25, 2010

Red Bull Ragnarok Norway

Spending a winter without kiteboarding is very unusual for me and it didn’t feel good at all!!

So by training with a personal trainer and staying fit I hope to prevent all injuries from now on…My ankle’s still bugging me a little bit, but I’m taking it easy!

It will take 3 to 6 months to fully recover from this ankle surgery, it’s only just been 3 months now, so I’ve got a little while to go with riding easy!! Harsh deals!

Anyways, I left home once again. This time to go snowkiting in Norway together with Aaron Hadlow. We got invited to the Red Bull Ragnarok.

The Ragnarok is a snowkite endurance race where 150 riders will battle it out in 5 rounds of 15-20km each. The Ragnarok is know for it’s very quick changing weather, one time it can be sunny – clear blue skies – no wind, five minutes later it will be a full cloudy snow storm blaster. So it’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen…

Red Bull Ragnarok Day 1 from Morten Gjerstad on Vimeo.

We both have never tried snowkiting, so we came a few days early prior to the event to get the hang of it and film some stuff.

Two locals, Remi Meum and Sigve Botnen who’re killer snowkiters showed us some of the best spots of the area.

We’ve been jumping of this 10mtr high wind lip. It’s feels so funny to be snowboarding with a kite and be able to go up the mountain. Then do some pendulum jumps and cruise around. I love going big and extreme and so does Sigve. He took us to a pretty decent size mountain where we could jump off which would immediately put you like 25mtr up in the air.

That felt soooo good, when you steer your kite very aggressively to the one side you can actually get the freefall feeling a bit.

So totally stoked on that, we had a good night of sleep. Then the race was a big deal.

110 competitors were waiting for the start signal, there wasn’t much wind at all. So I rigged my biggest kite size.

But as the horn went the snowstorm kicked in and we all took off to race. Big stress went down and some gnarly tangles and crashes happened right in front of me. I was so overpowered and by the time I got to the top of the mountain it started hauling even more. It was only ice and rocks, no grip anywhere. I had to go back down and call it a day…My ankle didn’t feel too well either so it was the right decision for me to quit.

Aaron was also very overpowered and couldn’t deal with it. So we got back to the car and just hung out and check out what some of the other riders could do.

After a long time of waiting the first riders appeared on the horizon to finish their first lap. Then they had to do four more rounds…

Big respect for Sigve Botnen, Bjorn Kaupeng, Petter Johnson for killing us all in the race…

C ya next year for another epic snowkiting trip. Check out some of the videos and pictures…

Ruben flips on the airbag from Morten Gjerstad on Vimeo.