Telemark Talk / Telemark Tips Forum

I did a XC touring speed test with light nordic touring skis one day, and heavy tele gear another day, timed runs.

The short answer: heavy tele was faster. What?!?!

The route was 10 miles, up and back, only 1130 feet of gain. That works out to a 4% slope overall, but there are ups and downs a bit. Snowed over road and hiking trail (part of the Pacific Crest Trail). Snow was a little fresh on consolidated, previously broken trail, perfect for XC the first day. Refrozen the next trip hence decided to try more supportive gear. Mostly kick and glide, not linked turning. Garmin forerunner data.
Gear was
Outback 68, Fischer BCX675 boots, 3 pins for 9.9 lbs. “XCD”
Vector BC, Scarpa T2x, Voile Switchbacks for 17.7 lbs!! “Tele”

Stats were:
XC gear, 3.4 mph average moving speed, 12.3 max. 3:40 total time.
Tele, 3.9 mph average moving speed, 16.1 max. 2:56 total time.
…..tele was faster, strangely.
XC average stride 1.94 m, 39 strides per minute
Tele average stride 2.4 m, 42 strides per minute

XC average heart rate 118 bpm, max 152 bpm
Tele average heart rate 130 bpm, max 157 bpm
……working harder with the tele!

I also broke it up into 6 segments, flat roads, uphill, downhill. The tele was faster on all segments, not just the downhill ones!

My conclusions:
Motivation and effort is more important than gear choice in kick and glide/touring speed. Outside a nordic ski race on groomed trails anyhow.
If in doubt, use the more downhill focused gear as touring, climbing or kick and glide efficiency is not as important as you might think.
It may be that poorly supportive but light boots lead to slower speeds than you might think, due to excess energy needed to balance on uneven trail conditions.

What do you think? Breaking the laws of physics here?

The Outback 68 is just a slow ski.

The soft flex means good grip, but poor glide.

I think for XCD to shine there needs to be substantial XC. I know there's not a ton of gain in your trip, but there's also not much flat.

I think that the vector BC is about the fastest possible "heavy" tele ski in existence. When you said "heavy tele" I was thinking TX comps, outlaw x, chedi skis and skins. You skied a really light and XCD focused setup and not what I think many would call "heavy".

I think, especially after doing a nordic race while 6" of snow fell, fresh snow really slows down any XC focused ski. Like by a lot. Your conditions probably made a bigger difference than you initially gave credit.

But... I also think that when things start to get actually steep the pace of XC oriented setups falls off a cliff. Like it's great to a point and then you just can't do anything. Well, maybe Johnny can but I can't, and I suspect most others end up in the same situation. So there is for sure a crossover point... somewhere.

I've always found that the difference in snow condition matters more than the gear I'm on as far as speed goes, but my xcd stuff is on the heavy side and my heavy stuff is on the light side. You can also get a better kick with a wide ski with either wax or scales. Depending on the snow you can get better glide with a wide ski because of float.

Heavier gear must take more energy though, but that would only matter if you're coming home totally spent.

I kind of feel like you have to use more mental effort and technique to keep things together with lighter gear, whereas with the heavier, more supportive equipment you can more easily just put the power down and go. Possibly get a little more out of descents as well. In certain terrain or conditions that might be more efficient?

12gaugesage wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 07, 2023 8:40 pm

I kind of feel like you have to use more mental effort and technique to keep things together with lighter gear, whereas with the heavier, more supportive equipment you can more easily just put the power down and go. Possibly get a little more out of descents as well. In certain terrain or conditions that might be more efficient?

Just keeping your skis tracking straight takes more energy with light boots, not to mention doing turns.

Skiing on my sbound 98s, which are more like a stiff single camber, and my heavy duty leathers which are too stiff for kick and glide, I don't feel like I'm going any faster. But every stride feels smoother and less effort and my leather boots don't murder my feet.

I think a couple things: one is that unless you could run the tests with different boots/bindings on the same skis, the difference in skis could be significant. Another is this points up the complexity of comparing different setups, including as others have mentioned the stability thing. Whether thst is a factor from one setup to another will depend on conditions, skier ability and whether one is more accustomed to one setup versus another. So, lots of factorsand its not as simple as one might think. Or in other words, ski what you like and dont worry about what gear anyone else thinks you ought to be on!

An efficient XC ski for one can be an inefficient ski for another person, when skiers have different weights. For efficiency, double camber stiffness needs to matched to skier weight (in a paper test). How did ski stiffnesses match the skier?

I agree that snow conditions matter as much or more as skis. I do not go XC skiing in fresh snow, I rather go to learn tele turns then. The test speeds look like slow snow, I have maintained speeds of 11 km/h on Gammes (in tracks).

However, thanks for testing and sharing! For me, the Voile ski speeds look really good for such wide skis. Would ski weight explain some of that?

DG99 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 07, 2023 7:28 pm

I did a XC touring speed test with light nordic touring skis one day, and heavy tele gear another day, timed runs.
My conclusions:
Motivation and effort is more important than gear choice in kick and glide/touring speed. Outside a nordic ski race on groomed trails anyhow.
If in doubt, use the more downhill focused gear as touring, climbing or kick and glide efficiency is not as important as you might think.
It may be that poorly supportive but light boots lead to slower speeds than you might think, due to excess energy needed to balance on uneven trail conditions.

What do you think? Breaking the laws of physics here?

Repeat the test with a 15 or 20 day tour in mixed terrain complete with steep mountain ups and downs, rolling Nordic terrain, forests, 30km long lake traverses, and snow in all its forms. If the heavy set up is still faster you are either Superman or Børge Ousland (when he was younger).