Telemark

[Teleman]

LAA you 'see'.....On a flat plane you roll your ski over on edge and the "Wing" sticking out will engage, hopefully enough for no back sliding....It's the reverse of Boot out that people used to write about when the ski was narrower than the binding.....Say it's about zero out and your cruising to a sweet ridge....Then there is a stream crossing or a delay while you go look for a solid crossing.....Generally being on longer skis with lots of camber you can bridge the water with one ski and quickly transfer weight to the other which you have already pushed across....your weight transfer and the double camber kept the at risk of water ski above it.....Nobody wants a cold ski with water on it because the powder will block on....You have to be kinda quick on the weight transfer or you will have to take off the skis and scrape...or...find a stump to rub....or limb...or stone...sometimes a good smack on a tree will loosen the snow/ice from the bottom....Double camber going up will keep the wax in place and allow the unweighted ski to easily slide up while a single camber will always engage wax so as to make the shuffle more resistant....like work.....compared to a double camber....Also the single camber will loose the wax a t some point....When you arrive at the top and are ready for TELEMARK....the wax pocket disengages.....No wait....just head them and down you go....And then if you want to check out another ridge the wax is still there....Double camber works as does wax but patterned bottoms work ok as well....TM

[MikeK]

OK Bruce, you convinced me. I'm going to throw out all my NNN-BC bindings and work on that technique

[connyro]

On a flat plane you roll your ski over on edge and the "Wing" sticking out will engage, hopefully enough for no back sliding....

Pretty sure it's your edge that's helping and not your binding.

BLAHBLAHBLAH....

???

...sometimes a good smack on a tree will loosen the snow/ice from the bottom.....TM

No wonder you wreak your skis. Don't 'smack them on a tree!'

Double camber works as does wax but patterned bottoms work ok as well....TM

In our snowpack which now consists of "sink to your tits" fluffy snow which grew by 2 feet the last couple of days, 'patterned bottoms' and almost no camber work real well for me but double-camber and wax works ok (not really)...

[MikeK]

Nice avatar connyro? Who is that?

[connyro]

Gee Mike, don't you know? Why it's my 'friend' crowbar.

[MikeK]

Oh no, I missed that one... I thought it might be our old black tele birdie friend. He's had a bit of a schism and has been trolling every ski forum on the net.

[teledance]

Teleman, been a tough season of skiing powder. No leather or double camber but some great black diamond powder. Feeling blessed since it is an El Nino. Cheers to you and the KTB crew.

[MikeK]

Man this thread delivers... more great words of wisdom...

Teleman, let's have a story!

Gather 'round the camp fire kidz... let's hear about BTE, before the KTB, before hats and the patches, before the names and snark. Those ones are the best!

[lowangle al]

I want to let all of you would be kick waxers know my experience with single camber skis. I get multiple tours out of a single wax application, same as with my double camber skis. When the snow is abrasive it will erode your wax away on double camber skis as well. The downhills will remove wax faster than when touring and the double camber won't help here because your bases (under foot) should be in contact with the snow if you are weighting the skis properly. The only time I have had a problem keeping kick wax on a ski is if the ski has been hot waxed for glide from tip to tail. Kick wax does not bond well to it.

Don't let the kick wax issue deter you from skiing single camber smooth based skis. If the snow is refrozen and abrasive you might be better off with fishscales but they may not work well in these conditions either.

[MikeK]

Al almost all the modern XCD skis are large single camber (camber and a half). A few seem to be soft double... doesn't matter much either way. To me matters more how stiff and how they reverse flex. That seems to be more of an indicator of how they turn (and their shape). Besides the Storetind, Kom and Vector, they all have 'Nordic Rocker'. Tips rise a couple millimeters when flexed... it ain't much.

The Annum is the only one I know of that has single camber like an Alpine ski. You can close it up with two fingers and it's pretty low in height.

The DC versions are thin and are really meant for skiing long distance on hard snow. The true DC skis I have I can really see the second camber. It's a totally different curvature in the middle of the ski. When you flex them it doesn't really go away, it's almost always still cambered a little towards the foot.