Ben Hooper Home
22 Dec 2011
@Londonist https://t.co/gRyUKD7a
Learning to Wakeboard
I never want to stop trying new things that keep me active, before my accident I was just starting to learn to wakeboard and it was something I thought I would never be able to do again. I had done a couple of water ski sessions with Sportability as tasters and the last one I managed to convince them to let me have a go on a wakeboard.
30 Aug 2011
Icelandic Challenge Public Launch
For many months now we have been flying kites, designing rigs, creating media and doing many other tasks to launch the Icelandic Challenge. It's been fantastic to work with a team that is so focused on making this work. Long hours have been put in by everyone and we really want to get your support now.
25 Jul 2011
Icelandic Challenge Rig Testing
Designing a rig for the Icelandic Challenge to cross the Vatnajokull glacier has gone from a drawing in Autumn 2010 to a functioning prototype that we can modify to test different setting that will be suitable for the crossing. As with any prototype sometime we go in the right direction and sometimes we don't.
07 Jul 2011
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Ready to fly
A New Challange
After my three ski seasons away, it was time to look for a new challenge. I still love to ski, love to race and love going fast, these are things that I will continue to do but I'll be taking a break from International racing to put all my efforts into a new challenge that is going to test me to the limit.
I was approached by members of the GB senior squad and asked if I would be interested in learning to fly big power kites, it was a no brainer, of course I wanted to. This is where is started in the Autumn of 2010. The challenge was to cross a glacial in Iceland using power kites, at the time I had no idea how I was going to do this but I was in.
So we have been working on that since then and are now ready to tell everyone about it , I'll be updating my news items to give you some progress reports, but for now please watch our show reel, its the start of things to come. Please also follow the links to our official site and subscribe to our news letter to get more detailed information in the future.
Icelandic Challenge
The Icelandic Challenge is the crossing of the Vatnajokull glacier. The largest in Europe, by snow kite.
The glacier includes seven volcanoes under its ice-cap; most are active. Pitted with crevasse fields, it has under it an ice cavern system several kilometres long.
With temperatures plummeting to -40 degrees centigrade and windspeeds of up to 50 km/h, an unassisted crossing by snow kite is a daunting task. Now consider that three of the team are disabled, the Challenge becomes quite exceptional.
