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Old March 12th 04, 11:24 AM
MB
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Default Icing on waxless skis

Me
To complicate matters further, hot waxing can make bc skis
too slippery for difficult terrain conditions.


Booker Bense
_ This is complete and utter crap.


Well, uhm... Thank you.

Waxing only improves turning and control.


I think you don't have experience of the difficult terrain
conditions I was discussing. If you haven't done it, I
guess you'll just have to take my word for it: Handling
well-glide-waxed skis simply is more difficult in small-scale
steep forested terrain (off-trail/off-track). In such conditions
grip (not only backwards, btw) tends to be much more important
than glide, but...

If you need slow skis to stay in
control then you should leave your skins on...


not so much, that killing the glide altogether with skins is
a good idea. With small-scale terrain, putting skins on and
off for the ups and the downs, just isn't practical either,
as you'd have to do it all the time.

What comes to "turning", I assume Booker is talking about
high-speed turns, like telemark turns. High-speed downhill
is a non-issue in difficult terrain, however.

_ Ski bases are manufactured in two ways, sintered and extruded
poly. Extruded base skis are pieces of junk because the base
has few if any pores to hold the wax. You only find this
construction on really cheap skis.


This is complete and utter... g

Eg, there are four Finnish manufacturers that currently manufacture
backcountry forest skis. Peltonen and Karhu seem to have chosen
non-porous bottoms, and Järvinen has porous ones. I haven't skied
with Harju's, but I'm quite sure they are non-porous too. Järvinen
switched from non-porous to porous for about ten years ago - and not
everyone was happy with this! None of the four are "really cheap skis",
and Järvinen isn't the most expensive of the lot, btw. Peltonen is the
current contractor for military skis (or was at least last year).
Peltonen's mil skis are very similar to the civilian ones, including
the non-porous fish-scale bottoms.

Besides, not holding wax properly obviously isn't an issue with
waxless skis. In the case of fish-scale non-porous bottoms, waxless
isn't a misnomer, although even such bottoms _can_ be waxed - it just
doesn't stay on that long - and in the case of severe icing conditions,
even such skis need to be waxed or otherwise anti-icing treated.

_ It's wax IN the base that makes skis perform, not wax
on it.


Wax _on_ the base keeps sticky snow from sticking. That's the
issue in anti-iceing.

Ski performance isn't a universal attribute - whether some skis perform
well depends very much on the actual conditions thery're used in.
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