The arrival day,

it was very warm and rainy this day and Len and Tim decidet to make some theory infront of a fire. Otherwise we had to use Klister for our skis and waterprooft clothers for the tour. But Klister is one of the worsest things u can use for your skis, it takes ages to get it off after using it.

So we where talking about wax and waxing skis. It’s kind of a science for it self.

Okay first of all you need to know a few thins:

A Cross-Countryski has a climbing zone, and a gliding zone, both are very important. The ski is congcave, that means that the tip and the heel are touching the ground if u stand with both feet on it. The middle part of the ski is in the air and only if you stand with most of your bodyweight on one Ski, it touches the ground

Thats pretty smart. So you can be really fast on downhill parts, (cause you will stand parallel with both skis) and you can climb on every mountain you want if you press your ski with your whole bodyweight on the ground.

To make that easyer, some cravty guys developed special wax. There are thousand types of waxes. Glidewax, Climbingwax, Basicwax, wax for new snow, wax for old snow, wax for cold temperatures, wax for warm temperatures, mixed waxes, Klister, etc…

We are using the most known hard waxes (temperatures in Celcius):

Red: 3° – (0°) new snow and +1° – (-1°) old snow

purple spez.: 0°- (-3°) new snow and -2°-(-6°) old snow

blue extra: -1° – (-7°) new snow and -3° – (-10) old snow

http://skiwachs-swix.com/de/swix/steigwachs/?page=all

If you want to wax your’e skiis you need a synt.cork and a scraper. You wax one foot before your bindings to the heel of the binding. You need to serve up the hard wax and after it you will rub it to the direction of the heel of your ski with your cork. Do this procedure 3-4 times again and every layer of wax schould start 5 cm closer to the heel of your binding. It depends on the snow conditions but one layer should hold 3-5 km.

I’m also using a base binding wax (swix VG35), this base binding wax is for long trips and hard conditions with old grainy snow to -22°C.

Base wax is a wax you are using for the climbingzone on your Ski. You need to clean your ski for it and scratch of all the old wax. After it you will iron it carefully onto the climbing zone of your ski. After you did it you need to use a cork and make it nice and smooth.

Now you can youse youre normal hardwax and put it onto the base wax. The basewax guaranteed a longer and better hold for the hardwax.

After a while youre ski can get rough. Specialy after long overnight trips. To protect the ski, and beeing faster downhill, you can youse now the glidewax. Currently I’m using a blue (CH6), cause I’m preparing for Hovden. You need to clean up the whole ski again and iron a thin layer of it onto the glidezones (tip, heel).

So how to get youre skiis perfect:

1.) Basewax

2.) Glidewax

3.) Hardwax

4.) Handle youre skiis with care and respect