Jeff,

Here in western Colorado, I found the tape to be just too much kick
and not enough glide. Our snow is most often cold and dry since we are
at 10kft+
http://gmnc.info

Even during spring-like klister conditions, it performs less well than
either klister or my waxless ski. And like Gene said, it is a pain to
clean off. So it kind of locks you into putting it on and leaving it
on one pair of skis. Your upper midwest snows are different. But I
have given up on the product. Besides I enjoy waxing.

On Dec 12, 8:37*am, "Jeff Potter (of OutYourBackdoor.com)"
wrote:
I saw the post on the new Grip AND Glide treatments, which reminded me
that I have some Start Grip tape, but I've never used it. I'm getting
closer to giving it a try. I just love optimal skis. At the same time,
I find myself very often in TWO situations where my fuss-factor is a
bit high. So maybe the tape could cure this.

The first situation is when I ski on my local trails, especially my
yard trail. I have an idea what the wax will be and I go out and I'm
wrong---I suppose a fix there is to be sure to check the temp just
before I go out rather than 2 hours before...(doh!) Yesterday I went
for a quick half-hour ski---and changed wax 3 times---so I spent about
half of my time coming and going as I didn't carry any wax with me.
Anyway, maybe the tape could just nuke all that wasteage. Or maybe I
should try just being smarter as way to save that time! : )

The second situation is when I go on multi-hour tours on ungroomed
trails. We start in the a.m. and I find that I quite often stop and
start about 6 times in a long outing. It takes a couple stops until I
get my first morning wax dialed in. Then during the day as the temps
warm up I rewax two or three more times. But my skis almost always
have very tasty nice performance! ...Which is a great thing. Maybe I
should just accept the time-wasteage in quality waxing. (But I note
that this is where a study showed that a no-wax ski is faster for day-
touring than waxable due to the starts/stops of rewaxing.)

Generally I find that my nowax skis are lame---good kick, half-good
glide---but I use them in slushy/fresh conditions just to have some
fun. But I find that my waxies can usually be made to work about TWICE
as good as my nowaxies.

Is this tape going to feel too close to nowax lameness for comfort?

I value all my ski outings and my time. I don't really want to fuss
with this tape then screw up even one outing or put in one useless
shop session.

So do I stick with my tried'n'true methods that give great skis but
often have built-in time wasteage or try this new "simple" method that
might cut out all that wasteage and fooling around...

Ha!

--JP