LilCliffy's Nordic Backcountry Touring Waxing

[CoreyLayton]

Question: for "crown" type skiis, would you still do Polar across the whole ski, including the crown sections?
Or, alternatively, Polar across the Tip and Crown sections, and some sort of "glide wax" for the Tails? (<<<probably overly-complicated and not necessary...)

Up until now, my waxing knowledge/experience is a generic slab of "cold" wax, that i would apply to my crown-type skiis - simply to keep the snow/ice from "sticking" - and not for performance reasons.

I hope to up my game a bit this season.
Thanks for posting such an informative thread!

[Woodserson]

I use hot glide wax on my crown skis. Make them as fast as possible. The mechanical grip is more than enough drag no sense in adding any more however slight.

Unrelatedly: I also use hot glide wax on the glide sections of my wax skis too, especially aft of the heelpiece, and use Polar in areas where I'm going to apply grip wax, usually heel forward. Unless it's my woodies and then I Polar the whole ski.

[Woodserson]

Oh, and I only use paste wax like Maxi-Glide or Swix F4 on the Fischer Offtrack Crown. On other waxless patterns that are made of the same base material as the glide sections (Madshus, Voile, Altai) I have hot waxed them using the special technique that is floating around the internet.

[lilcliffy]

I use very hard Polar wax on the entire base of my waxless-scaled (i.e. "Crown") touring skis.

I also use kick wax on scaled skis- even on the scales themselves.

The hard grip waxes glide on warm snow- and I get much better grip on cold and icy snow.

I know that is somewhat of a paradox to use grip/kick wax on a "waxless" ski, but it works for me in my local touring.

For consideration- my long, extended spring skiing has a mix of very cold mornings (often with fresh snow on top of white concrete) that warms up above freezing and rots in the afternoon. I need a ski that is going to perform all day in those conditions.

My local skiing has extreme temperature ranges- another reason why I avoid glide waxes is so that I rarely have to strip an entire base and apply a different glide wax following a significant temperature change (that will likely be temporary).

While I find hard grip waxes glide well on warmer snow- I have not gotten good performance from cold, hard glide wax on warmer wetter snow...

YMMV

[Woodserson]

While I find hard grip waxes glide well on warmer snow- I have not gotten good performance from cold, hard glide wax on warmer wetter snow...

YMMV

OH

This is very interesting. You can really notice this different between a cold glide wax vs. a cold grip wax on warm snow?

This may make me re-evaluate how I do things. I usually use a red wax (upper 20's temp) glide wax and figure that covers me higher and lower, but I lose a cold hard glide wax to fill in fishscales I don't want to use. I wonder now. Very interesting stuff. Do you have a good supportive story for this or is it gut feeling? (totally acceptable, just curious)

[corlay]

thank you all for this discussion - very helpful!

[lilcliffy]

While I find hard grip waxes glide well on warmer snow- I have not gotten good performance from cold, hard glide wax on warmer wetter snow...

YMMV

OH

This is very interesting. You can really notice this different between a cold glide wax vs. a cold grip wax on warm snow?

This may make me re-evaluate how I do things. I usually use a red wax (upper 20's temp) glide wax and figure that covers me higher and lower, but I lose a cold hard glide wax to fill in fishscales I don't want to use. I wonder now. Very interesting stuff. Do you have a good supportive story for this or is it gut feeling? (totally acceptable, just curious)

As the heart of my local winter is cold to very cold- the local wisdom is to use hard glide wax when the temperature drops- and my limited experience is that soft-warm glide wax does not perform well or last long on cold to very cold snow.

Conversely- I do not find that hard-cold glide wax performs well on warm wet snow- in fact I have many experiences with warm wet snow sticking to hard glide wax and creating this kind of sunction-cup effect as it does not disperse moisture effectively (like soft-warm glide wax does).

If one is using soft-warm glide wax most of the winter- this might not be a problem or might not even be noticed...

With grip wax-
my personal experience is that hard grip waxes glide well on warmer snow and disperse moisture effectively on warm wet snow. Therefore, I don't have to strip my base when skiing on warmer snow.

[Krakus]

Using very hard grip wax as a base (e.g. Swix Polar) enables one to extend hard grip waxes onto much warmer snow than recommended for performance track skiing. For example: with Polar as a base, I can use Swix Blue as a kick wax in warm snow temperatures that would recommend Swix Red!!

Gareth,
Does it really work? It's very interesting for me, as conditions here very often are a transition from Blue to Violet, or reverse. For example, temperature drop with altitude. Starting at a foot of the mountains I have to use Violet Special, especially that good grip is needed (steep ascent). However, at the tops and ridges temperature is lower, so icing and drag become a problem, while good glide would be more desirable...Changing wax is cumbersome.
By the way, how you remove wax of a day, if it's needed - by scraping only?

[lilcliffy]

Using very hard grip wax as a base (e.g. Swix Polar) enables one to extend hard grip waxes onto much warmer snow than recommended for performance track skiing. For example: with Polar as a base, I can use Swix Blue as a kick wax in warm snow temperatures that would recommend Swix Red!!

Gareth,
Does it really work? It's very interesting for me, as conditions here very often are a transition from Blue to Violet, or reverse. For example, temperature drop with altitude. Starting at a foot of the mountains I have to use Violet Special, especially that good grip is needed (steep ascent). However, at the tops and ridges temperature is lower, so icing and drag become a problem, while good glide would be more desirable...Changing wax is cumbersome.
By the way, how you remove wax of a day, if it's needed - by scraping only?

Yes- my limited experience is that this does work. I am regularly using Swix Green V-Line as a kick wax when others are using Blue + glide wax.

I know that this would not translate to maximum performance on a groomed track with a Classic track ski-

But on backcountry snow, hilly-steep terrain, and the extreme microtopography I ski on in the forest-

What I am doing with grip wax really works- for my context anyway.

As a note- this is the traditional wisdom with grip-kick waxing wood bases as well-
My local friend regualry uses a wooden touring ski- uses a very hard (cold) grip wax as the base treatment and then uses one full temperature rating lower for kick wax (i.e. Swix Green for temperatures recommending Blue).

As I think I have already noted-

Using grip wax as a base for Nordic Touring does "stop" working when the grip wax works effectively as a kick wax. For example, when the temperatures are cold enough for Polar to work as a kick wax- then I need to scrape much of it off.

And- yes- I remove kick wax by scraping only-
And I try to avoid soft kick wax and/or klisters until my spring skiing (i.e. I tend to use kicker skins for very temporary warm spells mid winter- thus avoiding removing soft kick wax/klister).

[Krakus]

Thanks, Gareth. I will definitely try it when we have enough snow here...