Telemark Talk / Telemark Tips Forum

I'm looking for advice and opinions on this question, ideally in relation to my specific situation. Where I live and ski (Scotland) we don't often have conditions that lend themselves to waxing. As such I have very little experience with kick waxing. I am however about to go on a wee trip to the Rondane in Norway, primarily for xc track skiing, but I will also take a BC set with me, in the hope that there is some soft snow and some enticing slopes.

With a relatively soft cambered ski like a Falketind, how much is kickwax likely to interfere with downhill fun and turns? I'm thinking that a I'll have to cruise along a loyper for a few km (outside of the track), before breaking off to climb whatever I may have decided is the objective.

The most simple option would be to use the Asnes kicker skins. I have wider grippier skins, as well as the 40mm race skins, so I can trade the glide for extra grip when needed.

I'm aware that you can stick a kicker skin over relatively cold grip wax, say up to a swix blue, so if conditions are indeed cold, I'm imagining there must also be an option to apply kickwax for the undulating loyper sections, to and from the hill, and just use the wide skins for the climb. I wouldn't want to do this however if it's going to make things slow and draggy for the descent.

I feel like I might be overthinking this, and clearly I just need to get out there and try both options for myself, but it's still a week away and I'd like to take the skis waxed so I don't have to mess about with that too much on arrival. Glide waxing the whole ski with something fairly cold is quite appealing at this stage. If I decide to give the kick waxing a go, is it just a case of giving the wax pocket a rub down with citrus wax remover and then applying a base wax followed by swix blue?

Thoughts and comments welcome.

I used 45 mm mohair skins with Falketind X on 12 inches (30 cm) of weird snow. Started wet, came down cold and dry after, and then temps started to rise dramatically.
Couldn’t make the wax work, and decided to try X-skin. It worked really well in those conditions, offering glide and grip. The glide was not great, but the glide was not great with wax that didn’t grip.
Sorry, that was not much help. I’ve committed to using the Xskin more frequently before going to warmer waxes. Even though I am pretty good with warm waxes, and have quite a few to choose from.
Wax and klister both work well, but you should be fine with the Xskin. With the caveat, I’ve never pointed an Xskin downhill in anything, but 3-D snow