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The Quest for New XC Skis

January 6, 2016 •

Conditions worsened after we crossed 2 mountain passes

We drove through a snow­storm for 6 hours and crossed 2 moun­tain passes before arriv­ing in Methow Val­ley.

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

Powdery snow in Big Valley

We were lucky enough to ski on pow­dery snow in Big 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.

Fischer XC Control My Style boots

Fis­cher XC Con­trol My Style boots

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

New skis for the Methow Valley

New skis for the Methow Val­ley

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.

Bruce waits for me to tighten my laces

Bruce waits for me to tighten my laces

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).

Ice-covered needles on a bitter cold morning

Ice-cov­ered nee­dles on a bit­ter cold morn­ing

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…

Trackbacks

  1. Every Journey Begins with the First Step says:
    January 22, 2016 at 6:52 pm

    […] start­ing a seri­ous train­ing régime, I’ll need to recover from a knee injury. That said, with a dis­ci­plined effort, there’s plenty of time to build up the […]

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Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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