Today was the first NENSA Eastern Cup of the season, and it’s impossible to imagine a better kick-off. The crew at Rikert did a phenomenal job putting the course into shape. It’s a really challenging and fun five K loop supported by really good snowmaking capacity, and what looked like a healthy amount of shoveling. The result was a hard track that sugared up during the day. People went on everything from binder and hardwax to straight klister. On the whole I think there were a lot of good solutions. We tested several basewax applications. Both Super base and K-base Klister felt a bit lean on kick compared to K-base binder. That’s not surprising, considering that the K-base binder has kicking klister ingredients in it. But I was concerned about the kicking component in the klister being slow, so we tried softening the K-base binder with some K-12 drywax. We covered that with K15 because it felt really fast compared to K18 (that’s often the case). Also, K15 has more multigrade material, and stays faster while keeping kick as temps warm and snow sugars up. We tested some other cover waxes as well, but we didn’t beat the K15, and we didn’t chase it too far because it’s better a better use of time to start working with race skis.
In the end, skis felt good on the K-base klister/K12 base combo with K15 on top. And it hung in there all day – same wax for the women’s race at the start of the day (air temp was 8F when we arrived) through the end of the guy’s race with temps in the mid twenties.
After the racing concluded we tested glide wax for tomorrow’s mass start skate race. We tested late in the day because overnight low temps aren’t supposed to drop too far, and should quickly return to today’s high temps.
With our glide testing we tried to isolate a number of different factors. We wanted to know what sort of base treatment under race paraffin would be best. We obviously wanted a good race paraffin. We tested powders, but we also ran some top-coats without powder. One big reason for this is that a lot of teams at this level don’t spend the money and time burning fluoro powders. If powders make a big difference, we want to be sure we can tell exactly why they’re so important.
For base waxes we tested under HF Violet paraffin, because that was our guess for race paraffin (based on temps, and the snow-type). We liked things in the following order:
10F Hardener
20F Hardener
LF Base
Map Black Graphite
The 10F hardener is the same base layer Amy has success with in West Yellowstone. As I’ve mentioned before, the hardeners are usually used as a shell on top of the race paraffin. But we’ve been playing with using them as a base for race paraffin and so far we’ve been happy. The 10F targets the warmest temperature range, and it has some fluoro material in it, while the 20F and 30F (for colder and coldest temps) are just synthetic paraffin. I don’t think it’s safe to assume that you’ll always wants a hardener, but we’re starting to get pretty excited about this application of the 10F, because it made a considerable difference today!
In the paraffin testing we found the following:
HF Blue
HF Violet
HF Blue/Yellow
HF Yellow
Well, I really thought that HF violet would win this one, and I had a secret hunch that HF Yellow might be a dark-horse pick. The yellow is the same hardness as the violet, but with more fluoro. How can that be a bad thing on a manmade base? Well, I was wrong. HF blue was clearly the best, and by a considerable margin.
We didn’t test the HF Blue over 10F, but the 10F/Violet combination was comparable to the HF Blue. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that 10F/HF Blue will be a winning combo tomorrow.
Powder testing is something we were excited about because of the new LDR (Long Distance Racing) powder, which has been winning a lot of tests for Vauhti in Finland. The LDR has a mix of materials that are supposed to work in a very broad range, but it doesn’t seem to be much of a compromise according to the testing we’ve heard about. This was our first opportunity to test the LDR – hence out excitement. Results are as follows:
LDR
hfC15.1
C11
hfC91.
hfC9.1 & Black Fox
So, the first thing to mention is that our first impression of the powders was not very positive. LDR was a pretty clear winner – especially at higher speeds on the descending. But LDR was really the only powder that gave us a really favorable impression compared with the paraffins. We ran the powders and paraffins on the same test fleet (running singles), and we did test the LDR against the HF Blue. LDR was better, and the difference was increasing as we skied. By that time the HF Blue had close to 3km on it, and the major selling point on the powders in below-freezing conditions is the durability. But it’s noteworth that the powders were not clearly better, as a class.
For topcoats we ran 15.1 liquid, 9.1 liquid and 15.1 block. The 9.1 liquid was the best, with 15.1 liquid in second, and the block in third (but not far out). I was a bit surprised by the 9.1 liquid after having colder products win the other tests. But it had a really nice glassy feeling.
It’s worth noting that the 9.1 liquid won a head to head test against the LDR powder. We tested the 15.1 liquid on top of 15.1 powder, and alone, and there wasn’t a really big difference. Given that the longest race tomorrow is 15KM I would be inclined to say that the liquid alone is looking pretty good. Our experience has been that the liquids will run well for over 15km, even in abrasive conditions. However, we haven’t run the 9.1 liquid in an endurance test. So it represents a risk.
In the end, if I were making skis for myself (the ultimate test), I would run 10F, HF Blue, LDR powder, and then retest the top-coats in the morning (which we’ll do in any case). However, given that the paraffins were close, I think that straight 10F and HF Blue would be a fine way to start the day, with the option to run a top-coat in the morning. My gut feeling is that 9.1 liquid would have been competitive with the powder/liquid combo today. Durability is really the only question, and if we were talking about the 15.1 liquid I would have no hesitations.
So, a good first test for the LDR powder, on a day where the powders seem to be more a case of confidence than anything else. The 9.1 liquid was a bit of a surprise winner, and it’s something that we’ll really need to test more in time – particularly for durability.