It looks like some fun spring weather for the Craftsbury S’Ender race this coming Sunday! Here is a bit of a wax recommendation for the event.
Glide during spring skiing has a lot to do with dirt management. It will be important to use a glide zone cleaner if you have one (apply it, let it dry, and then brush with a metal brush). If you do not have a glide zone cleaner, use a metal brush to make many passes to clean out your bases as much as possible.
For glide wax, it is recommended to apply one harder layer for durability such as CH6 or Toko Blue. After scraping and brushing, follow with a layer of Red wax such as CH8 or Toko Red (women’s race) or Yellow wax such as CH10 or Toko Yellow (men’s race).
The temps will be increasing very rapidly and the sun will be out, so you can expect the snow to be icy at first, before changing to corn and then eventually slushy consistency.
Look for the MNC tent to find some teammates! We will be testing a few non-fluoro sprays and race layers that we can apply to skis on race day, as well as structure!
This past Saturday, 22 MNC BKLers joined skiers from Frost Mountain Nordic, Sleepy Hollow BKL and Mad River BKL for our first ever NWVT BKL Mini-Fest at Sleepy Hollow Ski Center. It turned out to be quite a fun and festive event with individual start races for all age groups and a self-guided mini-marathon that kids could do with their parents/caregivers. An Eli-Enman designed terrain park, a few jumps in the woods, announcing by our own Dave Priganc , and tutu-clad Juniors Hanna Holm & Emma Page leading out each age class all added to the festive atmosphere.
Hanna leads out the 1/2 race.
Lollipoppers Bella Altadonna and Ollie Labor both skied the race and received a special maple lollipop for their efforts.
Ollie is totally psyched for that Maple leaf lollipop!
Racers in the 1/2, 3/4, 5/6 & 7/8 races received “Whittles” handmade by NENSA Program Director & Mad River BKL Leader Justin Beckwith and his wife, Brie Pike-Springer. These will make great holiday ornaments when the kids get tired of hanging them in their rooms!
In the Grades 1&2 race, MNC had speedy skiers Oliver Tremble, Mazzy Merrit, Finn Laber and Hazel Deane. These skiers all skated the 1km race (it was “freestyle” technique) and most of them just learned to skate this year. What an awesome job they did!
In the Grades 3/4 race, Liam Vile, Oakley Crawford and Ansel Sprague all skied the 2km course, while Fiona Repp and Ellery Mitchell ripped it up for the girls. The race ended over some twisty “whale bumps” and all these guys skied them with flying colors.
It was an all-girl crew for MNC in the Grades 5/6 race and Kate Carlson, Pearl Page, Ryley Morigeau, Brooke Greenberg, Tessa Diller and Hazel Fasching proved that MNC can really hold its own in this age group. It is no surprise that they took six of the top eight spots! Wow!
The Grade 7/8 Race is always very competitive at the New England Festival and this theme rang true for our Mini-Festival as well. There were 31 skiers in the race, 15 boys and 16 girls and some very fast times. For MNC, 7th graders Jonah Gorman and Pippa Diller did an excellent job in their races, giving the 8th graders some stiff competition. For 8th graders Evey Slavik, Brady Morigeau, Niko Cuneo and Liam Repp, this was the last BKL race of their careers. The last festival is always a bit bitter-sweet for an 8th grader. BKL & the festivals are so much fun that it’s sad to be moving on. But it’s exciting to look forward to becoming an MNC Junior and going on to racing in high school and in the Eastern Cup series. Niko and Brady have been racing together for years, have often been relay partners and it was fun to watch them battle it out again in this year’s Mini-Fest. Liam just started racing this year, but has been getting faster and faster. Evey deserves a special shout-out: She just joined Arctic Foxes and started skiing this year. She liked it so much, she decided to try racing and she skied impressively well in this race! I am sure all four of our 8th graders will continue their skiing in high school in one form or another. I hope they have a great time and I can’t wait to see what they do!
All the photos above were taken by photographer John Lazenby and below is a link to more that he posted on his website. There are some excellent photos of MNC skiers, so be sure to check it out! John is also going to put the photos on SmugMug soon so that you may purchase photos of the event. I will post a link when he does.
We realize that many of our members made big commitments to ski and train at Bolton this winter. We’re psyched to have helped put in lights and do some work to maintain the trails there…we’re frankly not sure what we would be doing without this resource and facility behind us!
That said, there have been reports of some MNC folk being less-than-friendly regarding the grooming and/or staff responsible for maintaining the trails.
Please know that as a ski coach who spends nearly every day outside on trails, I am keenly aware of conditions and grooming impacts. Have I been frustrated at times with how the grooming at Bolton has been handled this year? Yes. It has been a very snowy January and February, so I’ve had days of grumbling myself upon arriving to fluffy ungroomed powder, narrow trails that only received one pass with the machine, or snow that was tilled deep enough to bring up chunks of dirt when such deep work with the machine was not needed.
However, I’ve also been putting in some work grooming the trails too (particularly earlier in the season when the large machine could not be used due to low base) and nothing makes you appreciate and understand good grooming like trying to do it yourself.
Bolton is not Craftsbury right now, nor are they Sleepy Hollow. But prior to this year the trails at Bolton seemed to be groomed very little, if more than a handful of times in a season. What has happened this year is a massive step up, and it is just that: a step, with more steps to come.
In coaching athletes, I’ve come to learn that it’s usually not worth letting anger or judgement be directed at any single skier…often, I have learned too late that what was frustrating to me regarding an athlete(s) was often something completely unrelated to the skiing situation at hand. As some say, “everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” and so kindness often goes a lot further toward solving situations of anger, as opposed to aggression.
As a grooming example related to this, on two separate occasions this winter when I was angry about the grooming (or lack thereof) that I saw at Bolton, I went inside or emailed ready to pound on a table (metaphorically). I started out with a polite inquiry about grooming and in both cases learned that the machine had broken down. Thankfully, we were in a position to use our sled to help out and create some more skiable terrain. In another instance, I again went inside ready to have “guns blazing” only to find that it had been a new groomer’s first day running the big machine on their own. Because our biggest group skis on Tuesday and Thursday, it wasn’t such a dealbreaker after all that this Wednesday was the day that this staff member was practicing on the machine.
I have a lot of suggestions for Bolton regarding how the grooming can be improved, and I am looking forward to putting these suggestions and thoughts down more concretely and sharing them with the folks at the mountain. These suggestions also still involve MNC contributing to the improvements, as a club, because we appreciate this partnership and want to see it continue and grow. This year we can be thankful to be skiing at all and although pandemic stress may have us a little more quick on the trigger, we all need to respect the work everyone is doing to make the sport something we can enjoy.
It has been a busy year of testing and racing on fluoro-free products.
Many days are testing days…regular training session? Put two different waxes on and try them! Race day? At VT Cup #3 in Woodstock I went back through the notes to calculate that we tested a total of 36 different NF topcoats and combinations.
Ski waxing is a game of narrowing choices. Think about how many kickwaxes skiers often own: usually enough tins to fit into a small shopping bag, and that’s not even putting klister into the mix. Over plenty of time we’ve gotten pretty darn good at narrowing down our choices on a given day.
For training, we can toss on something of a good guess and have skis suitable for our workout. On race days in stable conditions, we can pick a good starting point of 4 options out of the unfathomable possibilities.
As we go forward into 2021 and beyond, glide waxing is becoming more similar to kick waxing in terms of being a multi-step, multi-layer, multi-method process. Before fluoros were out, we were on a very simple system of applying a neutral, hard and wide-ranging LF layer. This was followed-up with the liquid HF layer in a representative temp and snowtype. Finally, fluoro topcoats were tested.
Now, each respective layer has much more impact. Below is a diagram I created to represent what we’re going for. Both pyramids reach the same height, but the NF pyramid requires a broader base and more steps to get to the same level of performance. Note that this pyramid is ONLY taking into account wax, and not ski selection, base material, grinds, or hand structure.
So…which waxes fit into these categories? Right now, opening the MNC wax box is akin to dumping out the tacklebox of a lifelong fisherman (thought slightly more organized, for sure). For paraffins and underlayers, things look similar to what we’ve seen in the past, although these are only NF options. You may recognize some familiar companies, as well as some “underground” manufacturers. We’ve been testing them all!
Iron-on paraffins that we like and have seen success with:Rode line in all conditions, as well as the Star and Briko lines in warmer conditions. The SkiGo Green has been great in cold, and we saw great success with the Swix Pro Marathon Clean Snow…so much so that we are currently out of it and you’ll only notice the “Dirty Snow” variant here.
When we refer to graphite as an “underlayer” this means it’s the first thing applied to all skis. We test this by making two skis…one ski has graphite, scraped and brushed, followed by a paraffin like Toko Red, scraped and brushed. The second ski has the paraffin like Toko Red, scraped and brushed, followed by another layer of Toko Red, scraped and brushed. This lets you know if the graphite is having an effect on the paraffin that follows it. There is an excellent write-up of graphite ski waxes at this link.
Now on to the part more people are probably curious about, and the biggest “unknown” right now that every team, international teams included, are trying to learn about…fluoro free “topcoats”.
We define topcoats as a race-day application, usually applied within an hour to the start of the race. While we try to test paraffin and underlayers the day before a race (if conditions are looking similar on consecutive days) we will test NF topcoats as much and as late into the game as possible. While some of these products, like CH10X Spray or Rex G41, are technically just paraffins in liquid form, their quickness of application means we treat them as a viable final layer.
Liquid Topcoats
The big difference in liquids from various brands are the drying times. You want a liquid that dries FAST because a dry liquid means it has evaporated all of the solvent and reached maximum effectiveness.
The liquids that dry fast are: Rode, Vauhti, Star, Rex, and Start
The liquids that dry slowly are: Toko, Swix, Holmenkol
Some liquids are best when dried and polished with nylon. Some prefer to be brushed with metal. Others can really see a speed boost when they’re “fluffed” (as we say) with the wool roto-fluffer…more on that below.
Successful liquids we really like: All Rode liquids. Swix CH10X in slushy snow. Rex G41 in manmade snow at all temps. Start RG Graphite in new-falling snow. Start RG Violet in general mid-range temps. Toko BP Blue in colder natural snow. Vauhti LDR in certain transforming natural snow.
Life-hack: store your liquids in a toolbox arranged UPRIGHT to avoid any leakage
Powder Topcoats
Powders aren’t the fastest to apply, but they generally cool down in less time than an ironed paraffin and they can be viable race-day solutions. They sort of walk the line between a paraffin layer and a topcoat layer.
Successful powders we really like: Star Med powder which runs in a wide range from the 20s to the mid-30s. Vauhti LDR powder in transformed natural snow. Solda S-20 in dry, grainy snow.
Wool Topcoats
Definitely the most intriguing and unique option of the topcoats. Wool topcoats are applied in a unique fashion with a fancy-and-funny-looking lambswool roto device which we colloquially refer to as a “fluffer”.
Wool products go on fast, you can layer them easily (our standard procedure is to do 2 layers as one “app”) and they seem to last a loooong time. We aren’t going to run out of any of our wool products anytime soon and they are extremely cost-effective per use.
All you do is run an almost imperceptible-thin layer onto the ski, or right onto the wool fur, and then buff the ski. Next, hit with a horsehair brush one time before a second application and a second quick brush. Done! These waxes are prime for layering and mixing given the way they behave.
Wool products we really like: Ulla Black for transforming cold snow. Ulla Grey and YES Green for new cold snow. Star Med and Warm for general mid-range conditions, with Warm handling new-falling snow very well. The secret of Ulla Red/Black got out last year, as it’s the real weapon in manmade and dirty snow.
Want to see a video from Zach Caldwell all about wool waxes? Look no further:
The first in-person, non-virtual, official BKL race of the season was pulled off by the crew up at Craftsbury this past Sunday. What an afternoon for classic! Sunshine, blue skis, packed powdery snow and the excellent trails at Craftsbury were as much as any skier could ask for. The afternoon started with a fun lollipop course which began on the upper soccer field, went over the bumps and ripped down onto the lower soccer field to the finish. Our lollipopper, Bella Altadonna, loved it and skied it really fast!
Bella ready to rip in the Lollipop race.
The rest of the courses all featured everyone’s favorite, Lemon’s Haunt, with some added fun by-passes on single-track “Woodard’s Wheelie” which reminded me of skiing at Bolton! While the 5/6 kids did 2 laps of the featured course, the 7/8’s also got to schuss down Moss Run and run out onto Dennis’ Menace where they climbed up and over to the second little back country single track section before popping out onto Lemon’s Haunt and finishing around by the cabins on the lower soccer field.
Liam Vile and Anna Brillhart skied the 3/4 race and both skied really well. This was Anna’s first race since she was a lollipopper, so congratulations Anna! Kate Carlson, Ryley Morigeau and Hazel Fasching all skied the 5/6 race and all finished in the top 5. Jonah Gorman was our sole competitor in the 7/8 race and won it. Fantastic racing by all these skiers!
Anna Brillhart on course.
Look how high and forward Kate gets in her double pole!
The first in-person, non-virtual, official BKL race of the season was pulled off by the crew up at Craftsbury this past Sunday. What an afternoon for classic! Sunshine, blue skis, packed powdery snow and the excellent trails at Craftsbury were as much as any skier could ask for. The afternoon started with a fun lollipop course which began on the upper soccer field, went over the bumps and ripped down onto the lower soccer field to the finish. Our lollipopper, Bella Altadonna, loved it and skied it really fast!
