The Quest for New XC Skis

We went cross-coun­try ski­ing in north cen­tral Wash­ing­ton over the Christ­mas hol­i­days. It was a wel­come respite from the Seat­tle rain, and the depress­ing news of the final months of 2015.

We bat­tled dri­ving snow, white-out con­di­tions, ice, and unplowed roads for most of the long drive to Methow Val­ley.

Get­ting there took over 6 hours of white-knuck­led dri­ving, often at 35 MPH or less. Dri­ving through the snow­storm was worth it, because we had the prospect of per­fect con­di­tions for our ski get­away in Methow Val­ley.

Arrival: Methow Valley

We arrived in time for a glass of wine, and the sun­set alpen­glow over the snow­capped Cas­cades — the snow was tinged with a mil­lion shades of pink, salmon and gold.

We were look­ing for­ward to the prospect of ski­ing on freshly fallen pow­der snow and lots of sun­shine for the next 4–5 days.

The Methow Val­ley is justly famous for cross-coun­try ski­ing, thanks to 120 miles of groomed trails. It offers a wide choice of ter­rains and con­di­tions to prac­tice cross-coun­try ski­ing.

While there, we hoped to brush up on our rusty clas­sic XC tour­ing skills, learned years ago in the snowy mead­ows and wood­lands of Ver­mont and New Hamp­shire.

Shop for New Skis

But first: we had to equip our­selves for cross-coun­try ski­ing, and ensure our gear could with­stand Methow’s below zero tem­per­a­tures. We had thrown out my 20-year-old skis dur­ing last summer’s declut­ter­ing, so my XC boots would work only if we could buy skis with match­ing 3-pin bind­ings… And until we started shop­ping, we were unaware of how obso­lete that bind­ing sys­tem had become.

My hus­band gave me a poem for Christ­mas, in the form of a promise to take me shop­ping so we could replace my XC skis and boots, if need be.

We knew that Winthrop was home to sev­eral ski out­fit­ters, an ideal place to shop and try out dif­fer­ent options for Nordic ski­ing. Local friends advised us to shop at Winthrop Moun­tain Sports and the ski shop at Sun Moun­tain Lodge.

Although we tried sev­eral places, we ulti­mately focused on Winthrop Moun­tain Sports — a wise deci­sion. They offer a wider selec­tion of XC brands and choices, and co-owner Rita promised we’d be delighted with our even­tual choices. (She was right.)

That said, we were shop­ping between Christ­mas and New Year’s Eve, at the height of Methow’s win­ter sea­son, and inven­to­ries were deplet­ing fast…

Dis­cov­ery #1: our 3-pin bind­ings were obso­lete, so we could no longer match skis and boots unless we shopped online for used gear, and took our chances on fit and qual­ity… So we faced the need to buy a com­plete set of skis and boots.

Dis­cov­ery #2: we’d have to adjust our tech­nique to the new advances in ski engi­neer­ing.

Day 1: Choose the Right Boots

Deci­sion #1: which style do you pre­fer, skate ski­ing or clas­sic? Answer: clas­sic, AKA Nordic or cross coun­try. (We had to update our vocab­u­lary from “cross coun­try” to “clas­sic.”)

Deci­sion #2: which boots?

Deci­sion #3: which skis?

As expe­ri­enced (albeit out-of-prac­tice) skiers, we know that every­thing starts with the boots. Which boots you choose will deter­mine your over­all com­fort level — and con­strain your options when it comes to select­ing skis and bind­ings.

The right boots offer sup­port where you need it, fit com­fort­ably, and pro­vide enough room in the toe box so your feet stay warm despite bit­ter cold con­di­tions.

After try­ing a half dozen boots, I found a great pair of XC boots from Fis­cher. Sadly, they’re a half size too big, but Fischer’s boots only come in whole met­ric sizes. My new boots strike a good bal­ance between com­fort and sta­bil­ity, a big improve­ment over my prior boots.

For­tu­nately, the siz­ing prob­lem is solved by wear­ing thick hik­ing socks and tight­en­ing the laces every 30 min­utes or so. The side ben­e­fit of wear­ing overly big boots is that your toes aren’t cramped, so it’s eas­ier for your feet to stay warm. That was a a huge ben­e­fit last week, when ski­ing in below zero con­di­tions! My ski com­pan­ions were less com­fort­able.

Reset Expectations

We grew up ski­ing on clas­sic XC skis (Bonna 2000’s), flex­i­ble wooden skis that need a fresh coat­ing of pine tar at least once a sea­son, plus scrap­ing and fresh wax­ing for every out­ing. When you know how, and which wax com­bi­na­tions to apply given the con­di­tions, noth­ing beats freshly waxed skis.

My hus­band broke his Bon­nas years ago; mine are in a closet in New Eng­land.

Remem­ber­ing what it was like to ski on Bon­nas in Ver­mont defined our expec­ta­tions for the best that XC ski­ing could offer. An impos­si­ble stan­dard of excel­lence; it was clear we’d need to com­pro­mise when shop­ping in Methow Val­ley.

The sales rep pro­moted Salomon’s “skis with skins” as the best alter­na­tive for peo­ple who want fast skis with lots of kick. She then steered us away once I’d cho­sen a dif­fer­ent brand for my boots, due to incom­pat­i­ble bind­ing sys­tems.

We dis­cov­ered that there is less stan­dard­iza­tion in ski bind­ing tech­nolo­gies than there used to be. Today’s ski brands pur­sue lock-in strate­gies — design­ing pro­pri­etary sys­tems of boots and styles matched to spe­cific ski bind­ings, so con­sumers end up with fewer choices across brands. There are some nor­ma­tive bind­ing stan­dards, but the real­ity for con­sumers is one of incom­pat­i­bil­ity across the major brands.

Net net: If you buy Fis­cher boots, you buy Fis­cher skis; the same goes for Salomon.

Days 1–4: Find Skis to Match the Boots

Hav­ing cho­sen Fis­cher boots, I spent the next 3 days exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent mod­els of Fis­cher skis, try­ing to find the right bal­ance between kick and glide. It took a lot more work than I’d expected.

My first choice, a mid-level Fis­cher Crown at 197cm, proved to be all glide, no kick — I flew like a bat out of hell, but only thanks to con­tin­u­ous momen­tum, great bal­ance and skill­ful weight trans­fers. The skis were so fast that I kept run­ning over the backs of my husband’s skis — a novel expe­ri­ence for both of us.

When­ever I tried to put a kick into my stride, the skis would slip out from under me. Strid­ing was an exer­cise in con­stant slip­ping. It took a com­i­cally exag­ger­ated move­ment for me to get any trac­tion under the foot. Climb­ing hills was out-of-the-ques­tion. Over­all I found those skis exhil­a­rat­ing, but exhaust­ing.

But I wasn’t quite ready to give up on them…

Match Skis to Your Ski Style and Ability

Before rul­ing out those fast skis, we decided to take a refresher ski les­son the fol­low­ing day. We the­o­rized that my lack of kick might be caused by an XC tech­nique that wasn’t matched to today’s no-wax tech­nolo­gies, so we signed up for a semi-pri­vate ski les­son at Sun Moun­tain Lodge. We told the instruc­tor what we hoped to learn, and the deci­sion we were try­ing to make about the skis.

That ski les­son was very instruc­tive, a valu­able refresher on the­ory and tech­nique. We learned how to adjust our style and stance, given the tech­ni­cal advances in ski engi­neer­ing since the days of our early model no-wax skis.

Our instruc­tor prompted us to lean for­ward more aggres­sively — as if we were falling for­ward or ski­ing into gale-force winds; to hunch our shoul­ders, and assume “the ath­letic posi­tion.” He coached us on weight and bal­ance trans­fers while keep­ing the for­ward knee bent. We both improved very quickly.

As a yoga prac­ti­tioner, I was amused by the dif­fer­ences between XC’s ver­sion of the “ath­letic posi­tion” and the basic pos­ture for yoga — quite dif­fer­ent when it comes to posi­tion­ing the upper torso, col­lar­bones and shoul­der rota­tion.

The ski les­son revealed that I was indeed equipped with the wrong skis. The instruc­tor hinted that Fis­cher skis are tricky to fit, but delight­ful once you find the right pair… We talked about “skins” ver­sus “fish scales” — the buzz among seri­ous XC skiers seems to be in favor of skins.

After our les­son we rushed down the moun­tain to reach Winthrop Moun­tain Sports before clos­ing time. As hoped, we swapped out the fast all-glide skis for a model that promised to offer bet­ter trac­tion under the foot. Given my choice of the Fis­cher boots (and inven­tory short­ages at the shop), I was advised to switch to a shorter and more flex­i­ble ski (5 CM shorter, a less advanced model). Skins were not on offer.

Day 3: Out we went into the bit­ter cold, equipped with shorter skis for a long after­noon of ski­ing. I got plenty of kick, but sadly, no glide… My skis kept stick­ing to the snow, in sun­shine and shade.

Despite my exces­sive trac­tion on Day 3, we skied for sev­eral hours, rel­ish­ing the per­fect snow con­di­tions. It was loads of fun, but not a wise deci­sion because those skis proved to be even less well matched to my skill level than my orig­i­nal choice. (Per­haps I was too expe­ri­enced for them.)

At one point I fell face for­ward while ski­ing down a very small hill because my body was mov­ing faster than the skis — a humil­i­at­ing reminder of the need to find the right bal­ance between kick and glide.

After ski­ing for sev­eral hours, mak­ing exag­ger­ated moves in a des­per­ate quest for some glide, I ended up over-tax­ing my knees and injur­ing the soft tis­sue.

At day’s end we limped into the shop to swap out those dis­ap­point­ing skis. Rita, the shop owner, promised to pre­pare two more mod­els for me to try the fol­low­ing morn­ing. She was pretty con­fi­dent that one of them would be just right. She pro­posed I try the top-of-the-line recre­ational XC model from Fis­cher, and Fischer’s entry-level rac­ing model (con­firm­ing my sus­pi­cion that I’d been fight­ing with begin­ner level skis).

Day 4: We hit the trails early that morn­ing with both sets of skis. It was twelve below zero over break­fast, and about six below when we arrived at Big Val­ley. Pru­dent skiers might have waited until after­noon for warmer con­di­tions, but we couldn’t wait to try the new skis…

At Last, the Right Skis

I stepped into the high-per­for­mance Fis­cher tour­ing skis, got off to a fast start on freshly groomed trails, and it was love at first sight.

I also tried the rac­ing skis, but it took only 50 yards to reveal that the high-per­for­mance tour­ing skis were a bet­ter fit for my style and abil­ity than the rac­ers. The rac­ing skis went back into the Prius, ready to return to the shop.

After 4 days of shop­ping, I even­tu­ally chose to buy Fischer’s Super­lite Crown model. (The sad irony is that my hus­band has been ski­ing this model for the past 5 years or more — if only we had started here for me!)

Know­ing that we’d finally found the right skis, I stepped back into the Super­lites and we went out for a 90-minute cruise. Given the cold, there was hardly any­one else ski­ing Big Val­ley. Hur­ray! New skis and fab­u­lous con­di­tions for ski tour­ing, even bet­ter once the sun warmed the val­ley to a balmy nine degrees.

The sad irony: my knees were shot from three prior days of try­ing out skis that didn’t fit. Despite a lovely cruise in per­fect con­di­tions, my injured knees pre­vented me from fully enjoy­ing my new skis on our last day in Winthrop.

Once my knees recover, I look for­ward to future out­ings on these brand new skis — in the Methow Val­ley or closer venues in the Cas­cades like Hyack.

In the mean­time I’m grate­ful to my hus­band for such a gen­er­ous Christ­mas gift. We’re both grate­ful to the owner of Winthrop Moun­tain Sports, for work­ing so care­fully to ensure we found just the right skis and boots for me.

Skis and Boots for Bruce?

And as a final irony: my hus­band went ski­ing with friends on our last after­noon in Winthrop, and may now be fac­ing a shop­ping trip to replace his fail­ing equip­ment.

The tem­per­a­tures were so cold that the glue on his ski boots failed. As a result the soles, with their inte­gral 3-pin bind­ings, sep­a­rated from the boots. He’s going to try to glue boots and soles back together, but if that fails, we’re fac­ing another shop­ping trip.

He has 3-pin bind­ings on his Super­lite Crown skis, and may not be able to keep his beloved skis unless he can find some­one will­ing to install more mod­ern bind­ings on them. We’ll see what hap­pens…