THE FUTURE DOESN'T JUST HAPPEN; somebody has to create it. That's as true for adventure as it is for computer technology or medicine. In the future, polar explorers will enjoy unprecedented mobility using wind power, which will carry them farther afield than they've ever gone with dogs or machines. In the future, alpinists will treat Mount McKinley like a quadruple-black-diamond downhill run. In the future, at resorts across North America, ski-mountaineering races will be as popular as halfpipe competitions.

Those things won't just happen. They'll happen because Andrew McLean, the godfather of all things off-piste, helped invent them.

But that's the future. Today, a crisp December morning on the Wasatch Plateau—a high, wide yawn of alpine meadows and rolling hills about two hours south of Salt Lake City—McLean is focused on kites. Big kites. Kites capable of launching a rottweiler into low orbit. We're here so McLean can introduce me to his latest obsession, a ski-kite that can pull you at near-highway speeds across flat expanses of snow.

"This is the only time I wear a helmet," McLean tells me as he snaps his chin buckle. "Once you're hooked in, these things can drag you into trees and power lines. I've ended up in a barbed-wire fence a couple times."

McLean bundles a parachute-and-string contraption in his arms and hikes up a rise. A wiry man, he has an oversize noggin that rides on his lean 145-pound body, so that he vaguely resembles a five-foot-ten-inch sunflower. It's an appropriate effect, though, since it emphasizes the enormity of his brain.

"Andrew's got so much gray matter stirring in there that it sort of runs out his ears," says backcountry skier Armond DuBuque, 34, a ski partner of McLean's since 1997.

McLean hooks his climbing harness to the kite strings and tugs. He's wearing lightweight ski boots and a pair of alpine touring skis. He hopes to use this setup in October, when he heads to the Patagonian Ice Cap to make first descents on mountains so remote they've barely been climbed, let alone skied. The inspiration for this snow-sailing gear came to McLean a few years ago, while he was watching a Dutch explorer mess around with a crude early version of a ski-kite in Antarctica. Back home in Utah, McLean ordered some ripstop polyester, rounded up a set of plans, and sat down at his industrial sewing machine to create his own version. The kites he produced were pretty cheap—costing around $50 to make—and damned if they didn't work well.

"This one's modified from an old NASA parachute design for Gemini spacecraft," he says. "Let's see if we can get a little wind here." The purple canopy slowly rises to life, then catches a gust and rockets skyward. The web of lines zings taut and jerks McLean across the snow. He tacks east and west on the plateau, then, after about two minutes, comes back smiling.

Looks easy enough. Now it's my turn.

McLean attaches the strings to my harness and sets me loose. The kite promptly yanks me into the next county. I try to master the steering, but it's difficult because the harness feels like it's pulling my ass straight through my belly.

"Powerful, huh?" McLean yells. "Up in Baffin we got these things moving at 40 miles an hour."

After ten seconds of high-speed euphoria, I catch an edge and fall. The kite becomes a runaway mule, my face the sharp edge of a plow. In the distance, McLean is yelling, "Let go! Let go!" I drop the steering bar, and the kite wilts. Somewhat dazed, I lift my head and blow snow out of my nose.

OK, so the future may also hurt a bit.