We’ve all had those days on classic skis where everything works just right; the kick is easy, the glide is free, and we feel for a few minutes at a time like some kind of World Cup Superhero. Some of us are lucky enough to have owned skis that deliver these sensations with consistency. “Magic skis”; skis that make you a better skier. One of my goals in life has been to understand these skis when they show themselves, and to be able to hunt them down and select them. It’s harder than it sounds.
Traditional methods of measuring and “fitting” classic skis are an important starting point, but they don’t even begin to address the quality of magic, because magic is not a matter of fit. It is, however, important to understand the basics of what flex testing and paper tests can demonstrate: that classic skis are driven by position. When your weight is back in a neutral position on the foot, the wax pocket is open, and when you roll forward to the ball of your foot, the wax pocket closes. This is how classic skis must function in order to be satisfactory.
Somewhat more advanced methods of testing and evaluating classic skis will focus on pocket shape and height, and on the strength of the flex. These characteristics can help determine the necessary thickness and layering of a wax job, and the kind of loading or impulse required to find the kick at the start of the motion. Generally, a well-selected and appropriately waxed classic ski will allow you to find the kick with relative ease, though some may require more poise and precision than others. Pocket measurements can help us determine which skis are good for which conditions or wax jobs, but like the basic fit parameters, they don’t help us identify magic skis.
Another step toward advanced ski assessment will bring us to an examination of the gliding surfaces of a classic ski. It’s easy to focus only on the wax pocket when we’re looking at classic skis, but the skis need to glide as well, and the characteristics of the glide surfaces on classic skis are just as important as they are on skate skis. Conventional wisdom asserts that a long pressure distribution in the glide surfaces will yield better cold snow performance, while a short pressure distribution and some tip and tail splay will provide good suction release and superior speed in wet snow. But magic skis often seem to break the mold in terms of these glide zone conventions, and can work well in a wide variety of conditions.
So – we’ve described everything from fit, to pocket shape and action, to glide zone performance, and at every step I’ve told you “nope, you won’t find magic here”. What gives? You could be forgiven for getting frustrated – I’ve spent a decade trying to figure this out. Here’s what I think; to identify magic skis, we need to identify the qualities that we want to have in our skiing experience, and what ski characteristics support those qualities.
1 – The skis have to be free under foot. I didn’t say “fast” because a “free” feeling ski is a different thing. The critical point here is that the ski needs to be free to move until you kick it. Kick is not something that exists in isolation. Let’s face it, we’re climbing hills on frozen water using under 300 square cm of slightly tacky surface area. We’re not exactly talking about sneakers on pavement here. Grip on classic skis is something that exists in an ephemeral way, and you have it largely by virtue of believing that you have it. Your belief has everything to do with the sensation of contrast. A free ski will feel secure kicking with much less grip than a draggy ski. Think of it this way – imagine trying to ski uphill on a pair of snowshoes with crampons on the bottom. You will definitively and absolutely have more grip than you will with a waxed classic ski, but do you think you’ll feel like you’ve got good kick?
Free skis depend on limiting surface area contact between the snow and the ski while the ski is in motion. This can be done with a high pocket, or with what we call “residual camber”. Residual camber occurs when the high point of the camber is in front of the foot, so the pocket doesn’t close down flat to the snow. Skis with residual camber are always faster, but can be more difficult to kick, depending on how well balanced the pocket action is. 100% of the magic classic skis I’ve seen have a fairly pronounced residual camber, but with good balance in the action to ensure kick.
2 – The skis need to have accessible kick. With enough precision and impulse it’s possible to get the kick to hook-up on an extremely stiff and high-camber ski. I’ve seen a lot of skiers test skis and say “sure, I can kick these” when they don’t have what I would call “accessible” kick. Accessible kick means that you can ski a bit sloppy – you can soften the kick, or push your foot way up the hill and drag on it. It’s a rare day when you don’t get a bit ugly at some point in a classic race.
It’s tempting to just say that you need “soft” skis in order to have accessible kick. But I think the more important thing is to have a relatively low wax pocket. When the pocket rides really high, the skis will inevitably feel really free, and the kick may be easy to get with good timing and impulse. These skis can be quite soft by any objective measure. We used to measure the load required to close the skis from 0.2mm to 0.1mm under the foot, and use that as an index of finishing hardness. The softest finishing skis were as low as 1 or 2 kg, but these skis moved so much with small changes to the load, that they inevitably had a high-riding camber. They’re rewarding, nice, easy, “snappy” feeling skis until your timing is a little bit off or your wax isn’t perfect.
For accessible kick we generally want to have the wax running close to the snow, and this demands higher finishing strength in the pocket.
3 – You need to be able to finish the kick. We’ve talked about the front-end of the kick, or “finding” the kick. But you also need to be able to finish the kick; to move off the kicking foot with security and confidence. If the kick lets go in the last 25% of the motion it will rob you of a huge amount of confidence. Strides become clipped and tentative, and the effectiveness of the technique just dies.
This characteristic is, I think, the most overlooked and undervalued aspect of ski evaluation. Coaches and athletes often focus on finding the kick, but seldom do a good job of testing their ability to keep the kick under stress. Some skiers have a naturally compact and impulsive stride, and may not have as much of a problem focusing their force on the front end of the motion. Kris Freeman is a good example of someone like this. But he still makes his best races on skis where he can kick as long as he wants.
Keeping the kick is all a question of where the ski stores energy. We usually start looking at ski flex values at around half body weight, but this misses a lot of the action of the ski on release – as you’re unloading it at the end of the kick. If the ski carries a lot of strength outside the pocket, and stores energy in the materials outside of the pocket, then it will have a tendency to “eject” you from the kick at the end of the stride. So, we’re looking for skis that carry a high percentage of their strength in the pocket.
4 – The skis should feed your momentum. Ooooh-Kaaay. I may have just gone off the reservation a bit in terms of describing ski qualities. What does it even mean to say that a ski should “feed your momentum”? Well, good classic skiing is characterized by momentum – you pitch the machine into motion, get it rolling, and keep it rolling. When things are working well, it feels almost like (I imagine) surfing; you get on the front side of a wave and ride it.
We want a camber profile that delivers you fully into and through the stride. It should be just about as difficult to get into the kick as it is to fall off a log. Once you’ve committed your body forward, the ski rolls you forward into the motion. Some camber profiles feel more like stepping on a trampoline, where you’ve got to climb back out of the kick.
So we want free-running skis with accessible and predictable kick, and with a rolling momentum -based feeling. Yes. We can identify the material and camber profile properties that we associate with these qualities. So this should be a piece of cake. Now we just need to find skis with these qualities!
The problem is that we’re asking for lots of balance between competing qualities. Accessible kick and free glide. Low camber and good carrying capacity. Residual camber shape profile and balanced pocket action. None of these qualities are mutually exclusive, but they’re rare to find in combination. And the bottom line is that we need somebody to build these skis in order to be able to pick them!
Well, lucky us. I believe we hit the jackpot not once, but twice this season. We found skis at both Fischer and Madshus that I believe are the closest I’ve seen to full batches of “magic” skis. In the Fischer line-up, the Speedmax 9Q2 ski has the combination of low camber, sufficient material strength, long and low residual camber, balanced pocket action, and “rolling” pocket action that I’m looking for. At Madshus we started to find skis with these characteristics at the Olympics last season, and had tremendous results.
I asked Brian Gregg to write me a brief statement about the skis we grabbed for him at the Olympics, and here’s what he had to say: “The (new) classic skis are a game changer for me in classic skiing. Zach and Madshus set me up with a pair right before the 15km Classic race at the Olympics. I had one of my best classic races of my life because I had the kind of skis you dream about with bomber grip and great glide. My focus all year had been on skating races and yet I think that 15km Classic was my best race at the Olympics. I went on to have my best US Nationals 50k Classic ski on the same pair. ”
When we went to Norway in May we hoovered-up most everything we could find from this construction, and have continued to be pleased with testing feedback from summer ski opportunities.
It would be nice to be able to look the world straight in the face and promise “magic” classic skis every time. A whole lot still depends on the skier and the waxer. But I do feel like I’ve had a higher percentage of magic days recently, and I’m pretty sure it’s not because I’m getting stronger. In the end, I think we do better when we focus on skis that work with you to produce speed – to build momentum from stride to stride – than when we look to just crank up the running speed and initial kick sensation at the expense of relaxed and easy motions.
Let’s also be clear that these proverbial “magic” skis are not a panacea that will cover your butt in every imaginable condition. You still need klister skis and hardwax skis, and as the level gets higher so does the degree of specialization required. But at every level of specialization, we want to also see flexibility and tolerance in the materials. A selection of three or four pairs of “magic” skis would be totally sufficient to cover a World Cup fleet. And if you check with World Cup skiers on what skis they actually use in races, you’d likely find that it boiled down to about this number of pairs.