We arrived in Heber City, Utah, yesterday evening, in time to unload a huge amount of stuff from the car. Erik Mundahl flew in yesterday as well, and this morning we started setting up shop for a week of testing and waxing race skis at US Nationals.
We didn’t have time to put together a full slate of tests today, but we got our feet wet with a paraffin test, and some work with base waxes for kick. Morning temps were quite cold, but we got on the snow shortly after noon, and the temps had warmed considerably. A lot of the test results we heard about from the morning indicated that really cold paraffins were best.
We set-up to test with a speed trap, but there wasn’t a great place to run a test, and the results were highly variable and unhelpful. When the speed trap battery died after the second run we figured we’d go without numbers, and rely on subjective assessment. We liked the following:
1 – HF Blue/Yellow mix – this is a mix that the Vauhti world cup service guys told me about in Val di Fiemme last year. The Vauhti HF Yellow is not soft – it’s the same hardness as the Violet, but with more fluoro.
2 – HF Blue – quite good straight-up.
3 – LF Graphite/HF Blue – the graphite slowed down the HF Blue a bit.
4 – LF Green – we love this stuff when it’s not too cold. We’ve got it back on the snow tomorrow for a morning test.
5 – HF Green – not as good as the LF Green.
6 – HF Violet – not competitive.
7 – HF Violet / Fox 10 hardener – the hardener did not appear to help the violet.
We also took out six classic test skis with different base waxes on them. Amy and I had slightly different feelings, but agreed on the important parts. The snow is mostly manmade, but is acting quite a lot like fine-grained natural snow (must have been cold and dry snowmaking conditions!). All of the base waxes were tested with a cover of K18, which felt very good.
1 – Super Base / K-base Klister mix – Both Amy and I felt that this offered excellent kick and good speed – definitely a more positive hook-up than the super base alone.
2 – Super Base – Interestingly this was quite good for kick alone. I liked the kick on this better than the K-Base drywax binder.
3 – K-Base Klister – We’ve had good luck with the K-base klister as a base for drywax on manmade snow. Today it seemed to pick up a little ice, and while it didn’t slow the ski down, I would be careful of it.
4 – K-base Drywax – Amy didn’t get enough kick, and I thought it was slow. Neither of us ranked it high.
5 – M3S – This is a drywax/klister mix that I’ve made for years, and have used both as a base wax and as a kick wax. It had decent kick, but the wrong feeling – it didn’t soften and lengthen the hook-up – felt too much like skiing on straight drywax. Too much precision in the kick timing required.
6 – 75%/25% Violet/Uni Klister – Yesterday we heard that people had been skiing on klister covered (although the snow was quite different) and we decided to put a regular kicking klister in the lineup. This premix is a bit harder than the normal 50/50 premix that has now become K-Violet klister. But this has been an excellent covering klister for us in cold abrasive conditions. Today it wasn’t great – the kick was fine – it felt plenty grippy. But, while it wasn’t slow on average, it was prone to getting hitchy, and picked up some ice. And the kick quality also wasn’t what I wanted. It felt too soft – not “tight” enough.
We’ve already got our paraffin and powder tests ready for tomorrow. Today was my first chance to break-out the new prototype iron from Star. With a max temp of 190 celsius (of course I ran it at maximum) and a new thicker plate, it worked like a charm. Very stable and easy application of even some very high melt-point powders. I really like the normal Star iron, and was prepared to be unimpressed with this new prototype. I don’t automatically love the idea of a thicker base plate (and a heavier iron). But it was really great to work with.
We’ll run some earlier tests in colder snow tomorrow. And if we can find a good place to set-up a speed trap, perhaps we’ll even come up with some numbers. We’re planning to re-run the same tests in warmer conditions, closer to the men’s start time of noon. And we’ll toss in some top-coats as well. Sounds like a busy day. I’d better get to sleep!