A FEW WEEKS AFTER visiting McLean in Utah, I call him at his home. I'm eager to hear how he's making ends meet and to learn about any new travel plans he's cooked up.

"So how's unemployment working out for you?" I ask.

"Um, not so good," he laughs. "I'm cutting expenses, but there's only so much you can cut. There's no way to get around putting gas in the tank." In fact, he's doing fine, cobbling together an income by "teaching some skiing seminars, selling some photos, and doing some freelance designing." The day I call, he's busy working on a new project for G3—Genuine Guide Gear, a backcountry-equipment company in Vancouver, British Columbia—and putting together a ski-mountaineering video.

As his list goes on, McLean grows more animated: "If the wind's good," he says, "I want to test a new kite design."

And where might that take him?

"Hold on. Let me get my globe." A few moments later he comes back and puts it simply. "I want to see how far I can go into the world's remote regions," he says. "On skis."

If you drew a flow chart chronicling the evolution of adventure skiing, you'd notice a lot of moments like this: McLean observing the Dutch explorer in Antarctica, proceeding to Libecki's slide show, moving to his home workshop, where he stitches together his own kites, and going off on his exploratory trip to Baffin Island.

More recently, it would include a moment from 2004, when Mountain Hardwear—a Richmond, California–based gear company—published a fall catalog whose cover featured an amazing photograph, taken by Libecki, of adventurer John Helling skiing behind one of McLean's kites in Antarctica.

As this catalog circulated through gear shops around the country, you can be sure that weekend adventurers noticed it, and that many paused to take a closer look. Hmmm, that looks cool, some of them thought. How do I try one of those things? If they browsed the Web, they found out that an outfitter called NorthWinds was already offering guided kite-skiing trips to Baffin's Frobisher Bay, a place that may someday find itself clogged with kites.

As for McLean, he doesn't seem too interested in the greater commercial application of his endeavors. His role is to just be out there, soaring across some vast white plain on another continent, trailed by a partner or two, towing their sleds of garage-tweaked gear into some distant mountain range, where they'll climb and ski a dozen unnamed runs. Then they'll pack up and bring their story and pictures back home.

That's how the future happens.