Fernando Fernandes knows how to achieve goals. The adaptive Cabrinha team rider from Brazil shows us that quite a few things are possible with hard work, dedication and passion for what you do. “A year ago, Fernando told me that he wants to kite. He can not move his legs at all and I thought, this would be the challenge of my life,” says Gustavo Foerster, Fernando’s friend and manager, “But his commitment and focus convinced me and at that afternoon we started to work some kite controlling.”
Fast forward to this September, Fernando is snowkiting on top of the Andes mountains.
Fernando and his friends developed a seat for him to use with the board. “Our goal was to find the best way so Fernando could kite. We don’t have many references for that around the world so we then had to continue to try some gear and develop our own way to figure it out this. The 160′ Stylus was perfect for us.” Fernando also uses the Fireball, a huge improvement to his setup as he uses his abs to edge the board.
A helicopter flew the team to the top of San Martin de Los Andes, 200km south of Bariloche. The conditions were perfect however, snowkiting isn’t the easiest discipline.
Snowkiting is technically very difficult. The wind is gusty and also the direction changes a lot. “It was an insane experience. In the beginning the wind was very light, so we had the opportunity to try some downloops and he could kite going up the mountain and then the wind got better and we did some insane rides.”
This article first appeared on Cabrinha’s website here: https://www.cabrinhakites.com/blogs/news/snowkiting-with-fernando-fernandes