One thing Kris didn’t mention in the video is the removable cuff. Kris is one of a very few World Cup athletes who have competed in cuffless skate boots quite a lot. So the removable cuff is a nice feature for him.

Finally, in appreciation of Kris’s inimitable brand of blunt presentation, we’ll take this opportunity to coin the usage of the adjective “kris”. As in, “a kris review of the Alpina ESK” which appropriately includes the summary: “It’s the best boot on the market. You should buy it. That’s all I have to say.”

As for the boot – we’re not diving into the boot market in a big way. It wouldn’t make sense for us to get heavily involved with boots because we don’t have that many customers coming to our location, and ultimately, boots should be tried on. However, an increasing number of our customers know that they want, and know their sizing well. So we’re exploring the option of offering a small number of top-end boots. We’ll only sell what we know and have tested ourselves. Look for more information on this later in the summer.

New cosmetic from Madshus. It's always crazy how quickly an old cosmetic looks out of date.

We’re currently narrowing the sights on our plans for our European factory visits and ski picking trips this summer. Like last year, we’ll be making two trips across the pond, and will be grabbing some testing time on snow in Sognefjell, and hopefully on the Dachstein glacier later in the summer as well.

In the coming weeks we’ll be updating information on next year’s skis. For now, what you need to know is that the time to order skis for next year is now – before we pick them out!

Next season’s pricing has been adjusted slightly (you can guess which direction) to reflect increased costs. Here’s how it looks:

Fischer carbonlite – $725

Madshus Nanosonic – $725

Salomon Equipe 10 – $650

Yes, there IS something wrong with this picture. It's really two pictures.

Vacation season is over, and fleet evaluation season is beginning. Amy and I recently returned from several days in Colorado, visiting the Hoffman family in Aspen, with a quick trip to Vail to check out the SSCV operation (impressive).At last count we had something in excess of 220 pairs of skis in the shop, from 21 different skiers. A few of these are just early-bird pre-season grinding jobs, but mostly we’ve got skis here for evaluation.

What is this “evaluation” that we keep talking about? You might well ask! We’ll let you in on a little secret: we make our living by grinding and selling skis. In order to do that, we want to do two things for you – we want to grind your skis, and we want to sell you more skis. Always more skis. What we’ve found is that telling you, our loyal customer, that “you should have more skis” only works once or twice. After a little while, we need to make a more sophisticated argument. So, once we’ve got our hooks into you with one or two pairs of skis, we’ll probably suggest that we do a “fleet evaluation”. BE CAREFUL! We’re about to sell you some more skis!

The purpose of the fleet evaluation, aside from just selling you more skis, is to make sure that your set-up is working as intended and that you’re taking best advantage of the materials at your disposal. More often than not, we begin working with skiers who already own skis that they like. We might not even see these skis before we start adding new skis to the line-up. Often enough the starting point is something like finding a pair of skis for warm conditions to complement an existing pair of great cold skis. And often enough, it turns out that these new warm skis are better than the great cold skis, even in cold conditions. How is this possible? It’s possible because skis keep getting better, and a pair that was great three or four years ago is likely to have been surpassed by more recent developments and refinements.

The fleet evaluation process is something we do in cooperation with the skier. We know skis pretty well, but skiers tend to know when their skis are working better than anybody. So the final word on the success of a fleet set-up always comes from the skier. The fleet set-up process tends to get traction after a season or two of working together, as we start to learn the characteristics that reward a given skier, and the conditions where they’re most likely to struggle with their existing set-up.

The most common scenario is for a skier to come to us with several pairs of skis from a variety of manufacturers, and of a variety of different ages. Very few skiers are happy with their skis in an unqualified way – usually there are a pair or maybe two that they really like, and some others that they don’t. The instinct is to try to make the bad skis good by finding a set of conditions where they’ll be really great. The hardest part of the process is to convince somebody that the skis they got five years ago, that have never been good in any conditions, aren’t worth putting more money into. Our goal is (to sell lots of skis) to improve the overall quality of the fleet in two stages. First, we’ll try to identify one pair of skis that we can add to the fleet to complement the existing skis, but also to occupy a broad range of common conditions. Because we’ve got really high confidence in new materials, we general aim to have the first pair of new skis be something that gets used 60-70% of the time. We don’t want to sell a customer a brand-new dedicated slush ski to complement a fleet of three other pairs that are all four to six years old. We want to sell you something that you’ll use and appreciate right away, and often.

The next stage of fleet development is to fill-in around the edges of the most central range of conditions by identifying gaps in the range of well-covered conditions, and replacing old materials that aren’t measuring up to the standard of the new skis. This is a relatively easy thing to do when we’ve started the process with a clear vision of how the fleet will be built over time.

The easiest way to build a good fleet is just to start from scratch with three or four pairs of skis. But that process doesn’t hold many lessons, or give us a chance to get to know our customers. The better way to build a fleet is to start by looking at everything, and talking through the skier’s experience. Then the final solution evolves through mutually built understanding of all the factors that contribute to success.

Speedcross3 on the left, Fellcross on the right.

Caldwell Sport department of off-topic product endorsements

After the American Birkebeiner back in February the good folks at Salomon appeared to be experiencing particularly warm and fuzzy feelings – double victory tends to do that for you. Josh Korn asked for sizing info for me and Amy, and a few days later we got running shoes in the mail – two pairs each, an XRMission, and a Speedcross3.

Now, running shoes are an area where I have no expertise at all, but it won’t surprise those of you who know me that my lack of expertise doesn’t prevent me from having firm opinions. My opinion of Salomon running shoes has, for years, been that they’re great for walking around in. When I forgot my running shoes on my trip to Annecy last Summer, Alex Haas pulled a pair of XR Crossmax out of inventory for me, and I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that they were really good. I tend to like very light and neutral shoes, and too much cushioning makes running feel difficult to me. Those crossmax shoes felt like good running shoes, but they were a little too wide and platformy in the outsole for the feeling I like on trails.

So I was pretty fired up to open the box from Josh and find the Speedcross3. Aside from being strikingly bright orange, the shoe just screams trail. I’m mostly certain that what you see when you look down at your feet is just as important as anything else in a running shoe. Surprisingly, when I went running in the Speedcross, it felt almost too cushy (in spite of its bad-*** look). Also, the heel felt a little high, with a fairly big drop down to the toe. Don’t get me wrong – a great shoe in many respects – but there was room for my uninformed opinion to provide some feedback. I passed that feedback along to Josh the next time we talked, and presto, the world’s most perfect trail shoe arrived at my doorstep. Meet the Fellcross.

Fellcross. Faster than Gunnar.

First, it looks cool. Sort of agressive red with some carbonish looking black action, and a downright aggressive attitude. But more than that, it was a bit more snappy and tight in its elastic response (OK, some ski vocab creeping in there, sorry), and the heel was enough lower that it felt like it put me into a more natural forefoot position. The shoe has phenomenal traction, and great stability (maybe because it’s 10mm lower than the speedcross). When I’m light and fit enough to enjoy running, the feeling is that I hardly touch the ground, and gravity isn’t much of a player in the game. I might never be fast, but when I’ve been running some, I feel fast. That’s a feeling I’m always looking for in skis, so I’m pretty attuned to it. The Fellcross put me in touch with that feeling from the first step. No fitness, about eight pounds overweight, and gravity keeping a close supervisory eye on me… And yet, 45 minutes at a time I feel like the trees are passing effortlessly. Fitness might take a little time, but the Fellcross is helping me pass that time in the most enjoyable possible way. Also, it’s faster than Gunnar, and that’s important.

If you typically like a light, neutral shoe, and you’re looking for something good for trail running, give the Fellcross a serious look. Unlike many Salomon shoes, this isn’t one you’ll want to just walk around in (unless you’re cool enough to be named Evan Elliott). But it’s the best shoe I’ve found for my trail running needs.

Thanks to Alex Matthews from Fasterskier for the photo!

OK – I told you about the time I went and ground skis all night for two days before the Birkie. Did I ever tell you about the one where I got to wax two winners? Wow – that was fun!

I’ve just returned from waxing skis for a handful of Salomon-supported athletes, including Tad Elliott, Holly Brooks, Laura McCabe, Rebecca Dussault, Martin Banerud, and Rob Whitney. The group produced some outstanding results, including two overall winners in Holly and Tad, a fourth by Laura, and a sixth by Rebecca. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: success in ski service comes when you pick the right athletes to work with.

What Made a Difference?
Everybody knows the conventional wisdom – Ski “flex” is most important, followed by grind, followed by wax. Sophisticated people understand that these factors are additive – good flex plus good grind plus good wax makes great race skis. Even with the additive nature of the factors, often enough one will trump the others. In the case of this year’s Birkie my strong feeling is that the skis made the biggest difference, and to a degree, the ski/grind combination. In one case, skiers from the same team, with the same wax (incidentally, the same wax I was using), had very different experiences. One guy had great skis until OO when they got pretty bad, and another had bad skis until OO when they got really good. In the end I feel that a lot of wax combinations were very competitive, but it needed to be on the right pair of skis.

Wax
I’m always looking for an opportunity to make a big difference doing something unique and crazy. No such opportunity presented itself this time around. We tested paraffins, we tested powders, we tested fluoroblocks, liquids, and voodoo. In the end it turned out that everything was more or less by the book – nothing too fancy. Somebody asked me on Saturday night at the Sawmill whether there had been some secret, unavailable something that we used. Nope – it was all off-the-shelf product that is readily available. And in the end I think we did good work, but nothing race-deciding. We tested a whole bunch of different brands, and used the stuff that tested best for us, just like always.

Thursday’s testing was focused on building an understanding of the way the snow was behaving, using different hardnesses and additives from the same brand to gain good footing on the basics. Friday we broadened our stance quite a bit in terms of the range of products (and brands) that we were testing. We also saw an interesting shift in the fluoro powder testing from mid-range products winning Thursday to colder products winning Friday. My guess is that waxes picked on Thursday might have been pretty good for later waves, and maybe in the latter part of the race, but that the Friday testing was more applicable for the early starters. Interestingly, we saw good consistency Thursday and Friday in paraffin testing.

Both days we tested it seemed that Graphite and Moly underlayers were a liability. While we didn’t do exhaustive testing of every “black” underlayer out there, everything we did try made the skis feel quite awful. As for race paraffin, we had four different waxes in the HF “blue” range running well on Friday. I would have been quite content with any one of them as race wax.

For the race we ended up using a very cold LF underlayer in lieu of any sort of graphite or moly base wax. I wanted the durability of a hard base, and felt that the early morning cold would appreciate the effort (you always want to try to make the weather happy). Then we used an HF blue, and a cold fluoro powder (ironed). Saturday morning we started testing top coats and hand structures at 6 AM at OO. For the most part it was difficult to improve on our race powder application. Out of seven different blocks and liquids we found only one treatment that improved the powder. We also found one rolled-on hand structure that was not a liability, and so we used that with an eye on the second half of the race.

Grinds
I didn’t bring a grind-test fleet out with me to test because there was no point – all the race skis are already ground. Testing just south of the OO road crossing (a popular spot) meant that I saw plenty of athletes that I know testing skis in the two days prior to the race. A LOT of different stuff was running. In the end Tad won on an S1-0X, and Holly won on a linear grind that Oleg Ragilo got done in Estonia earlier this winter. I also waxed skis with grinds from Finn Sisu, and from Nordic Ultratune, and those skiers said they had great skis. I know of at least five different Caldwell Sport structures that produced good results – from LS00 to 3/3(!). So, I really don’t think it was all about the grind on this day, though the combination of ski and grind did appear to be important. Which brings us to:

Testing race skis on Friday

Skis
This is where we saw the real action and variability in performance. I tested Tad’s skis alone on Thursday, with Tad on Friday, and again in the dark on Saturday morning. Holly arrived on Thursday evening, and we got her skis on the snow together on Friday, with another retest on Saturday morning. Some of the athletes had their choices narrowed down to one pair for race waxing, but others had multiple pairs, and because the testing opportunity at the start area isn’t great, I skied all the potential race skis early in the morning at OO. Holly’s race options were all waxed the same, while Tad’s were all waxed differently. It depended on how we felt about the comparative ranges of the skis, and what conditions we wanted to target.

I brought four pairs of skis out from my own inventory for Tad and Holly to test. I was pretty pleased that both of those guys had one of my skis in the running on Saturday morning. Tad ended up racing on a pair of Soft Ground skis that I brought out.

This would be a good time to pause and go over the Soft Ground ski just a little bit. It’s a new product from Salomon this year, and it’s been really good for quite a few Salomon racers. Jessie Diggins has used it a lot, and Caitlin Gregg says it’s her best cold ski. The Soft Ground is a completely different ski from the normal Salomon skis – different thickness profile, different combination of materials – basically a different design philosophy. The ski was developed by a guy who spent years working for Rossignol, who is now in charge of production for Salomon at the Amer factory in Altenmarkt, Austria. The other Salomon skis are designed by the Salomon research and design team in Annecy, France. The difference is best summarized by saying that the Soft Ground skis have thinner and more compliant materials at the tip and tail, they have a longer pressure distribution, and a more even distribution of load between front and rear (more load on the front end than the normal Salomon skis).

In the testing on Thursday I really liked a very strong ski with an S1-0X that Tad has used to good effect this year (he scored World Cup points on it in Davos, and I think this is the one he used to win the National Championship 15K). My second pick was the Soft Ground ski that I had brought out. That Soft Ground ski was one that I picked for Tad in the summer, and sent with him for Period 1. He never raced on it in Europe, and when he was back for Nationals I changed it out of my inventory with him for another cold ski. Since then I had played with the Soft Ground skis some more, and in particular I had played with binding position. My original set-up was to mount those skis pretty close to the balance point because I felt that the front end wanted some load to fully express the running surface. However, I have since felt that combing back about 8-10mm was yielding slightly higher speed. So, after testing on Thursday I pulled off the bindings, eyeballed things a bit, and remounted the skis 8mm back from where they had been. On Friday, they were the fastest thing we had on the snow. But we both felt that they were a little funky feeling – maybe not squirrely, but not as easy to stand on as the regular skis. What is clear is that they released really easily, and while the regular skis felt better (as fast and more stable) when they were flat, the Soft Ground skis felt silky and really fast on edge. Still, based on familiarity and very competitive speed we were favoring a pair of older skis that Joakim Augustsson had put a J1 onto in Sweden (it started the year with an S2-1X, but Tad and the service guys wanted it set-up colder over in Europe).

But Saturday morning, the Soft Ground skis were yet another notch faster than anything else. I took them to the start and Tad and I talked it over. Given the speed, and the easy release, Tad felt that he would be able to ski the first 30K with very low power and energy cost because the Soft Ground skis take so little input to release. I assured him that the speed would hold-up when he put the hammer down, and so he took those skis.

What is interesting, is that the situation was almost the opposite with Holly. In testing on Friday we had things narrowed down to two pairs – a hard snow ski that she got in Europe that had really phenomenal speed at the high end, and a pretty active normal ski from my inventory with an S1-0X. I think I would have picked the normal ski on Friday, and Holly’s husband Rob also liked that one (all 200 lbs of him). But Holly really liked the feeling of the hard snow ski. And when I tested in the morning on Saturday I also would have given the edge to the hard snow ski. So, I fought the temptation to suggest that she use “my” pair, and just handed her that hard snow ski. I was a bit nervous at the start with snow falling hard enough to slow down the track (it started after our early morning testing was finished). But half an hour before the start is not a good time to be second-guessing all of your testing work.

A few hours after the race Holly wondered out-loud why she didn’t have any Soft Ground skis, since almost everybody who had them was using them. The answer is that she was getting her skis direct from the racing guys in Europe. Since the Soft Ground model was developed in Altenmarkt, and is a recent addition to the line, it’s not high on the list of priorities for the World Cup racing guys, who have to focus on using what they know best. They’re working with and testing the new skis just like we are, but the US market is a bit ahead of the world in adopting this new model. So, we’ll be working on getting some Soft Ground skis into Holly’s hands, at least by Super Tour finals!

Conclusion
In the end, waxing for winners is a huge boost to the ego. I’ve never been the biggest Birkie booster out there, but it’s hard not to get captivated by the energy of the event, and the double-victory is something that will take a World Cup or major championship podium to beat (to be fair I was pretty fired up when I woke up to Noah’s silver medal performance at U23 World Champs on Thursday morning). But there are so many rewards in this game. Does a double victory trump a text message like this one from Ross Dreger?

My S1-0X skis were very good for a second year in a row. For a citizen racer with a family and a career, 39th is about as good as it gets at 45 y.o. Many thanks to you. My skis have rejuvinated me. Lots of beers were downed yesterday.

Many thanks to you Ross. I have an awesome job.

A Note on Ski Industry Politics
The Birkie is one of the most important marketing opportunities of the year for ski and wax companies – exposure at the Birkie penetrates the customer base like almost nothing else. So it’s understandable when companies want to protect their investments in the athletes they sponsor. So imagine the set-up; Andy Gerlach, the North American brand manager for Start, and an international marketing muckity-muck for Salomon, contacts me to see about coming out to provide ski service for Tad, Holly and some other Salomon athletes. These athletes have existing sponsorship agreements with a variety of wax and pole companies, either individually or through their clubs. So, before anybody even got on an airplane to head to Birkie-land, the potential existed for ruffled feathers. What’s cool about the ski industry is that everybody involved agreed that what we all wanted was to see the athletes succeed. In the end, we’re not going to talk at all about what wax was on who’s skis, because it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we got a huge amount of support in this enterprise from Andy, from Ian Harvey with Toko, from Chris Hall with Swix, and from some other wax companies as well. I compared testing notes with all these guys, got wax when it was needed, and ran the operation like any high-level ski-service operation – with the goal being good skis and successful athletes. The successes of the athletes that I worked with reflects well on all of these companies and their representatives, because those people are there to support success.

Tad at the 2011 US Nationals in Rumford, courtesy of Flying Point Road

I have booked a ticket to fly out to the Midwest for the Birkie. I’ll be leaving Wednesday, and my primary purpose in making this trip is to support Tad Elliott. Tad is known to most folks in the ski world. He’s a USST B-team member and he scored his first World Cup points this year in a 30K skate in Davos. He’s also a Salomon athlete, and in large part the reason that we are now a Salomon dealer. We manage Tad’s fleet (with plenty of help from USST staff and the Salomon World Cup service techs). Salomon sprang for the ticket to bring Tad back for the Birkie this year, and it has worked out well because there are no more stand-alone skate races on the World Cup calendar (and Tad is a much stronger skater).

Any opportunity to do service for Tad is a pleasure, because Tad is what is known to the young folks these days as a ‘rad dude”. Or maybe that was the young folks back when I was young(er). Anyway, I haven’t worked with him on race support since World Championships in Oslo, nearly a year ago. I’ll also be working for a handful of other Salomon athletes, including Holly Brooks who I got to know recently doing ski service for her at the Tour de Ski. All things told, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I went back into the archives to dig up some pictures of my first Birkie trip, back in 2004. This is back when I was running my first Tazzari machine in a box truck. Nick Brown, Mike Wynn and I had the adventure of a lifetime, driving the truck out to Wisconsin, and preparing skis for the Birkie. I couldn’t find any pictures. Almost certainly because there was no time to take any pictures. But I found the write-up that I published after the trip, and thought that it would be worth sharing.

Note: Like pretty much any look back 8 years into the past, this account leaves me quite self-conscious, and is embarrassing in ways. What was true then is still true now – I always work conscientiously. And so I can accept the inevitable feeling of how naive I was about so many things back then. I’ve gotten better at what I do. I hope I feel the same way in another 8 years about the work I’m doing now. Keep moving forward! So, here it is – straight from February 2004.

Birkie Race Report

The details of this report will take some space, so I’m providing a quick summary to start out. Those of you with nothing better to do can read on!

The Birkie was a wild experience – unlike anything I’ve ever seen. In the final analysis we made all the right decisions based on a whole lot of testing. But our results were not totally satisfactory. There is really nothing to apologize for – there’s not a decision I would have made differently given another chance working with the same information I had. But conditions Saturday were different from anything we saw all week long. The primary difference was in the quality of the snowpack and the way it worked with the specific pressure distribution pattern and structure of a given ski. The temperature and humidity variable was well covered and tested.

In the end we had great skis for some, good skis for others, and average skis for still others. It’s impossible to parse the variables to determine exactly what determined who was happy and who wasn’t, but I’ll take a good stab at it below.

Summary of Testing

We tested structures and wax throughout the week at the coldest and warmest extremes we could find. Some days we tested three times in order to see different track conditions. In the end we chose the following treatment:

Structure: Z40XL (same final crossing structure as Z40 with deeper and wider channels).

Initial Heatbox Saturation: Star Uniblock Yellow – excellent fluidity and very low melt point.

Heatbox Conditioning: Star LA6 – very good test results in our underlayer testing all week long – appropriate hardness for a conditioning wax, and enough fluorocarbon content to ensure good bonding between layers.

Race Layer 1: Star Map Black – proven durability and good underlayer test results. Every time we tested an underlayer over Map Black its performance was improved.

Race Layer 2: Star HA2 – The softest star high fluoro paraffin won our underlayer tests all week at all temperatures – even significantly below its range. In many cases it was faster than pure fluorocarbon top coats. This wax is not a magic bullet in all conditions, but it performed extremely well all week

Top-coat: Star F1 – typically the best Star fluoro in glazy new snow, this tested extremely well all week and was a winner in the Women’s Elite Sprints. Our Elite wave skiers got Ski-Go C-44 which tested marginally better in the more freshly tilled conditions.

Other Test Results: Swix HFBD7 tested well all week, throughout the range of temperatures, as did Swix FC7. The FC7 won a couple of tests and in the end we chose the Star based on the consistency of its test results, not based on any guarantee that it would be the fastest. On race morning I felt that the F1 was a little bit better than the FC1. The Swix HF8 and FC8 were not impressive. No products from other companies were competitive in our tests- with the exception of one HWK topcoat that we didn’t have enough of to use, and wouldn’t have chosen over our final pick in any event.

The whole (long) story:

Nick was supposed to be in school. I started telling other people that he was coming to the Birkie before he even agreed. I think he may have read it on the website before he made up his mind. I couldn’t see doing the trip without him so I’m really happy that he came along. However, the two of use weren’t enough to do all the work we had lined up in addition to the testing that would be necessary to support the work.

It’s really hard to pull somebody in from the outside to work as part of a small crew. Efficiency is very important and the wrong person will hurt far more than help. For this reason I was really unwilling to take anybody that I didn’t know. A week before departure I didn’t have anybody lined up. Then Mike Wynn made the mistake of offering to help me if I came to the Lake Placid Loppet next year and I fired back an e-mail suggesting that he drop everything and come out to the Birkie.

There’s some history here. Right after US Nationals a year ago Mike drove over to Putney from Glens Falls NY to check out the operation and have me grind his skis. I had just started making the Z40 during Nationals. In fact, it still may have had a working name other than Z40. in any case, I showed it to him and then refused to put it on his skis because I didn’t know it well enough. instead he got an XC02. When his skis were done and in the heatbox we went out for a ski on test skis. We each took one Z40 and one XC02. Mike made the call within three strides and he spent the rest of the ski (and most of the past year) pissed off at me for not giving him a Z40. So, when I asked him to come along it was kind of a joke. I didn’t think he’d have the time, inclination or family support to leave home for a week of thankless work. But I also knew he’d be valuable if he could come.

I won’t write a whole lot about the drive out. It felt like hell at the time. But that was before the drive back home. We didn’t know what hell was. Yet.

We pulled into Seeley late afternoon on Monday. After a quick dinner at the Sawmill we headed out to get on snow under the lights. Mostly just to shake our legs out, but I had another agenda. For my own peace of mind it was important to test our test procedure. We took out six pairs of test skis with different grinds.

It’s probably a good time for a note on our test procedures. The more I test the less I use a speed trap. It’s really hard to get statistically significant test results from a speed trap. But more importantly a half-weight test just doesn’t tell you much about the way a ski will climb, or even descend in competition. I generally favor testing by feel, but I always uses some basic rules. The first rule is to test blind. I can’t know what’s on the test skis because my own prejudice will color the results. We spent the whole week testing blind – mostly by putting tape of the numbers on the test skis and changing all the designations. The second rule is to let each test pilot make up his own mind. We’ll compare notes along the way, but in the end everybody has to make an independent choice.

So, that first night we tested by feel and we tested blind. We compared notes along the lines of :”here, try number 2 against number 6 and see what you think”. And in the end we all made our own calls. I had worked with Nick enough to know that his results are trustworthy. And I had a great deal of faith in Mike’s sense of feel. But Mike didn’t necessarily share that faith. So when it came time to make our picks he felt a little pressure to “get it right”. Well, we all made exactly the same picks, as we did all week, over and over. I can’t produce better proof than that of the effectiveness of testing by feel.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we focused on testing structures throughout a range of temperatures and snow conditions. We wanted to try to nail down the temperature profile and the extent of the transformation throughout the day. We ran a test fleet of 10 pairs of skis, and reground three of the original six pairs to try to narrow the range of structures that we were testing once we got an initial look at the conditions. In all we tested 13 structures throughout the week. Most of these were modifications and variations of the Z40 that has done so well in such a wide range of conditions all year long. There may be a few people out there who understand the naming system well enough to be able to understand what is meant by the following list: Z40, Z40XL, Z35, Z35.85, Z30, Z30.8, Z28(compound with theZ40 cross), Z40S(sharp), Z40XLS. We also ran an SLC02 to nail down the wet end (out of range) and some of the more conventional linear structures. Z40 and Z40XL never finished out of the top three picks in testing. Z30.8 won one test in the wettest glaziest conditions we found, but was not as good in the drier stuff. Z35.85 is a grind that we made for the first time at the Birkie and ran the closest to the leaders of any of the new ones. This will bear some watching and further testing for the possibility of a permanent position on the grind menu. The sharp versions of the versions of the Z40 grinds were an attempt to create a more aggressive top surface with a proven cross pattern. They were unimpressive in testing with one or two exceptions. But when they were bad they were so bad that we really never considered them. In the end, I think they may have been a better choise for Saturday than anything else, but that’s because Saturday’s snow was unlike anything we saw in testing.

On Thursday operations heated up as customers started arriving in larger numbers and we started testing wax underlayers pretty aggressively. A note on wax testing. We use a separate fleet of matched test skis for wax testing, and we reground them all with Z40 at the beginning of the week in order to have them “in range” for the conditions. When I have time I like to start by testing underlayers to try to build a model of the conditions and what variable are doing what. Wax does two things – it modifies the hardness of the base and it modifies the chemical composition of the base with additives (like fluorocarbons or shear lubricants). My goal in testing base layers is to gain an understanding of the roll that the variables play. Is hardness more important than additive content or vice versa? Often there is an inherent trade-off and we’ll have a harder low-additive wax competing well against softer high-additive waxes, and sometimes beating them. That’s when it’s time to bring top-coats into the mix to see how they run against the best underlayers, and how they modify the underlayers. Often a hard, low-additive wax will win the underlayer test, but will not perform as well under a pure fluorocarbon topcoat.

Oh, yeah, we also test base layers for our final underlayers. This time around Map Black modified all our final underlayers very successfully and was a natural choice for the race work-up by virtue of its ability to broaden the range of a warm wax on the cold end and its proven durability.

We started testing topcoats after our initial underlayer tests on Thursday, and continued testing until 9:00PM on Friday night. Topcoats are an interesting variable in and of themselves. There seems to be a broadly accepted consensus among much of the race community that one pure fluorocarbon is as good as the next. In fact, they’re all quite different and their performance can vary dramatically. In our initial topcoat testing we found that several of the topcoats actually slowed down the underlayers. We also found some that were great in some conditions but much worse in others. For a race like the Birkie we’ve got a couple of considerations. The length of the race indicates an pure fluoro topcoat if only for durability. A lot of times you can beat a pure fluoro finish for a few K, but the Birkie goes a lot longer than that! We also wanted to pick top-coats that were competitve throughout the range of potential conditions.

Our wax call was built from the results of at least five separate tests over two days. In the end we could have had good success with a number of different combinations but I was extremely happy with the wax call.

Back to structures. Through Thursday we’d seen quite a range of conditions in our structure testing and Z40XL was emerging as the most consistent performer. Everything that we had running in addition to the straight Z40 was an attempt to nail down a warmer range without comprimising the cold-end performance too badly. The forecast was still calling for Friday night temps in the low teens and the snow was definitely drying out overnight and with new grooming.

We had a batch of about 25 pairs of skis to be delivered Friday morning to customers who would do the final layers on their own. The majority of these were sponsored athletes from the Factory Team, Alpina and Atomic. Because of the customer traffic all day Thursday and the need to have both Nick and Mike running tests for most of the day we got a very late start on our Thursday night batch. We had made the Z40XL call and went to work on it. Eventually we convinced Mike to go to bed because he was entered for the race. Nick and I kept working and listening to the radio without really keeping track of time. Until Morning Edition came one. When Bob Edwards introduced the show Nick and I looked at each other and said “oh shit”. We were just wrapping up and it was important to finish and get skis into the heatbox for saturation so that people could pick them up on Friday. We went to bed after 4:00AM and were back in the truck before 8:00 to keep pushing skis through the heatbox. As it was, we had to have some people come back later because we were behind schedule with the heatbox and we ended up comping some people full service waxing in order to hang on to the skis for a little longer.

Customer traffic stayed high on Friday, even though we weren’t taking in many new skis. Part of the business model is to be accessible to anybody who is curious about the process. During the Birkie that turns out to be several thousand people. Mike and Nick hit the snow fairly early on Friday for testing, but there was no real urgency because conditions were still overcast and the new snow ensured that the transformation during race day would be different than Friday. Those guys were out there testing with the Italians Friday morning and Nick got some useful information from them. They said they were only testing Swix stuff because that is what they had. They were intrigued by the grinds we were testing and had never seen the true linear channels of a Z-series grind. Actually, they had a hard time believing that it was not done with hand tools. It took Nick a while to convince them to try some of the test skis but they were quite impressed when they did, and Nick thought they might come by to have some work done. But we never saw them.

Things cleared out a bit Friday late afternoon and we started cranking on skis. We had about 40 pairs still to grind and a good handful in need of various stages of waxing and heatboxing from the previous day’s batch. We were doing well with out work and had made the call to use a colder HA4 underlayer based on the forecast and the equal performance of the HA4 with the warmer HA2 during Fridays testing. But sometime after midnight I went out to take a pee and noticed that it sure didn’t feel like the temp was going down. We put the thermohygrometer out and found that the temperature was still 29 degrees. We watched it for a little while and it was surely not dropping.

At this point we had some decisions to make. We had tested through a broad range of temperatures and had good success with our chosen waxes throughout the range. Our topcoats were already determined for their consistency throughout the range and we wouldn’t make any adjustments there. But we’d already adjusted our underlayer to the colder end and we made the call to readjust for the warmer temps at about 3:00AM. Actually, we were pretty happy with the circumstances at the time because we’d made the appropriate adjustment and were very confident in our work. However, there was a new layer of time-pressure addded to the equation as we realized that we had less than three hours on our schedule to do our final underlayers and fluoro topcoats on over 40 pairs of skis.

We flew. Pure adrenaline. We knew it would be tight and that we would be late and that there would be anxious customers waiting for us, but we also knew that we had it right. So we kept cranking. I can confidently say that, in spite of how fast we were working, we did step professionally and well.

At 7:00 AM we finished applying fluoros – an hour and a half after we’d planned to leave for the start. We loaded the van in record time and hit the road at ten past seven, leaving the truck in a state of total mayhem. As we left we realized that we didn’t have our start access permit and that it was too late to do anything about it. I drove up to Cable with a huge pit of doubt in my stomach. Only Peter Hale was confident that he’d be able to talk our way through because he’d done it so often in the past. Well, we made it, thanks to Peter’s strong persuasion and my rally-driving one of the walking paths to the start with Security yelling after us. I truly apologize for our unprofessional arrival and for keeping so many customers waiting. I hope everybody realizes that we were trying to be as conscientious as possible and to take no shortcuts with anybody’s skis, regardless of where they started.

In the end we did OK. As I said, we did really well with some people and with others we were just middle of the pack. Mike raced on a pair of my skis that were OK, but not better than average. He was running in the top hundred through 40K before the long week of hard work caught up with him and he exploded spectacularly. As he put it – we should have been able to see the mushroom-cloud from the finish. My wife Amy skied steady for 51 K, with a quick stop to say hi to Gunnar and me at OO. I’m pretty sure she cleaned-up in the 5-weeks-post-partum division.

I spent a good hour at the finish talking to customers and top level racers and both. It was clear that some people had better luck than others on our structure/wax combo. It is worth noting that conditions appeared to be wet but mealy, not glazy. Anybody with less than stellar skis from us had the right wax ut the wrong structure. A ski with a long, even pressure distribution worked very well. These included a lot of Madshus and some Atomics along with assorted others. Chris Cook was extremely pleased with his Z40XL, and Dan Campbell had really great skis – maybe among the best I saw in the race. But people with shorter, hotter pressure distribution generally had less satisfactory skis. These included both Mike and Amy, and most other people on Fischers and assorted others. The conditions were such that ski flex made a big difference, and it was critical that ski flex be matched well with structure. It was the first time all week that we saw these two factors as codependent variables to quite such a degree. In fact, it was the most extreme example of this that I’ve ever seen.

There were structures out there that did not act this way, which is the biggest disappointment to me. Again, these were relatively fine structures, but characterized by a sharper finish. A good example would have been a Finn Sisu uni grind. In general these structures do not have the range of the Z40 and I spend a lot of time trying to find structures that do not “talk” to the snow the way these sharper ones do. But there are days when they are indicated. We event tested two “sharp” versions of the Z40 during the week and found that, when they were bad they were too bad to risk. I didn’t run any structure skis on race day, but I’m confident that the Z40XLS would have been our best ski for the second half of the race. I also know that I need to develop a sharper structure than the Z40 to handle conditions such as these, without going to the extreme represented by the Z40XLS. An overspecialized structure will not be useful to anybody with less then 15 pairs of skis.

After several days of reflection and a lot of e-mails from customers I’m quite satisfied that we did the right thing every step of the way, but I’m no less disappointed that our service didn’t dominate the race for each and every customer. In any case, it’s been really reassuring to hear nothing but interest and appreciation, even from customers who saw faster skis on the course. As I’ve said, I don’t feel that we’ve got anything to apologize for in our testing and decision making process. But I am sorry that we got burned a little bit in the end. In general I’m not satisfied with “acceptable” skis. I’m always working for “outstanding”.

All in all the whole experience was plenty encouraging enough to bring me back for another shot. This year was extremely exploratory in nature and we were (obviously) at capacity. Next year I’ll make some significant adjustments in order to be able to provide the same level of service to a greater number of customers. We turned a few people away this year and even with a larger staff, more work space, and earlier drop-off times I think we’ll have to turn away more people next year. But the bottom-line is that growth will be necessary to facilitate a return. We made money this year, but after the expenses are tallied up we didn’t get much of an hourly wage. I could certainly have ended up with more in the bank and many fewer hours spent by staying at home and doing my standard gig.

However, I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything. It was great to meet so many people, and especially great to establish Mike as an auxiliary member of our operation. I’ll use him again any chance I get. The contacts we made in Seeley with the whole crew at the Sawmill and with Tim and Cindy at Riverbrook will be valuable for years to come.

Once again, thanks to everybody for all the support. And if you haven’t been in touch to let me know how things went, please drop a line!

Zach

Tour de Ski opening venue. We've seen plenty of these conditions this year.

Bad-Winter Notes & Impressions

This winter has been marked by some of the worst snow conditions in memory, nationwide. The industry always struggles in bad snow years, and we feel very fortunate to be dedicated to the relatively stable racing sector. Racers are die-hard – prepared to spend money on equipment, travel and racing; so spending a little more on travel, and chasing themselves in circles on short loops doesn’t seem to dampen their enthusiasm much. Two or three winters in a row like this might end up really hurting, but this one has been more revealing than painful.

Why revealing? Bad snow means a lot of skiing on old, transformed or manmade snow. When we set-up our color scheme to describe conditions we felt it was necessary to pay some special attention to this range of conditions, and so we put in a violet category to cover transformed and manmade snow. Good timing!

L2-0 – With a poor snow year, and a lot of racing on transformed or manmade snow –  we’ve had the perfect set-up world-wide for a lot of “violet” conditions. Predictably, under the circumstances, our L2-0 and L2-0S have been enjoying some good success. We’ve seen these grinds run in bitter cold on manmade snow, and in Kuusamo Kris Freeman raced on his in a squalling rain storm. The temperature and moisture versatility of the grind in transformed snow has been excellent. The grind was used by pretty much everybody who had one at US Nationals, and chalked up some great results, thanks to some great racers.

Photo shamelessly stolen from Andy Newell/Fasterskier. Jessie Diggins seems excited about her S1-0X skis. Or maybe it was the historic 5th place relay finish. One or the other.

S1-0X – If there was a question-mark in the grind line-up heading into this season it was S1-0X, which we felt had a fairly specific and narrow range in new-snow “blue” conditions. Well, maybe it does, but it has seen a lot of success this season, both domestically and internationally. Most notably, Jessie Diggins used this grind to win qualifying in the Moscow city sprint World Cup, and went on to finish 6^th in the rounds. A thrilling result, and one of a few very high water marks for our grinds. The feedback on this grind has been great, and we’ve also seen it do well in the cold end of the violet range. Tad Elliot used this grind when he won the National Championship 15K skate on colder manmade snow, shortly after using the same skis (and grind) to take World Cup points in brand new cold snow in a 30K skate in Davos. It’s all about picking the right athletes…

Photo stolen from Fasterskier. Sylvan busted out his 115s from his College days with a new L2-0S to finish 3rd at Nationals.

Fischer 115 – For several years we’ve felt that the 115 construction ski from Fischer had limited usefulness compared to the 610. This year, the same factors that have contributed to the success of L2-0 are making the 115 ski a very valuable tool as well. Part of this is simply based on understanding – as Sylvan Ellefson found at US Nationals in Rumford, a good 115 ski with an L2-0S is a real asset in manmade snow. Sylvan used a pair of 115s in both skate races there – a ski he hadn’t used since his college days – to finish 3^rd in the 15K and 4^th in the sprint, and earn the Nor-Am leader start-rights for the final World Cup period. He wouldn’t have taken them out of the bag unless we had specifically identified those conditions for the skis.

Now that we’ve identified violet conditions as something to prepare for, and set it aside from the blue/red continuum, we’ll probably bring in a handful of 115 construction skis for next year’s inventory. If nothing else it should guarantee that we have a wonderful snowy winter, relegating these nice new skis to the back of the ski bag!

Noah leading the train at Spring Series, on his Madshus 102 skis with Rode Violet hardwax. These skis rule in everything from green to blue to violet to red conditions.

Madshus 102 – We’ve been excited about the cold classic ski from Madshus skis for a couple of years now. Madshus has really nailed the balance between strength and shape in this pocket. This ski has been the foundation for Noah Hoffman’s development in the senior ranks into a great classic skier. As a junior he was known for his skating, but at a World Cup level he’s had his brightest spots in classic. Relaxed kick and great speed are what everybody is looking for. It sounds so simple – but you can’t compete if you can’t move easily, and you surely can’t compete at the World Cup level if your skis are slow. Noah took his first World Cup points this season in a 15K classic in Otepaa, on an extremely hard course, with a pair of Madshus 102 skis. Cool stuff, but that’s not the story here.

What we continually need to find for our customers is a ski that works well in both hardwax and klister conditions. Wet snow is pretty specialized, and for great skis in wet conditions you really need a dedicated wet klister ski. But most racers, even at the upper ends of the collegiate spectrum, need something to handle hardwax, binder and klister-covered conditions. Even cold klister will often get thrown into this mix. For this purpose the Madshus 102 has been almost like a formula. A ski that is easy to kick in extra blue, but also has the pocket integrity and shape to wax full length with cold klister and have great running speed. We’ve seen these skis really shine in the violet conditions we’ve had so far this winter.