It was a wild weekend in Craftsbury, with Sunday’s mass start classic races canceled because of a heavy ice storm. It was absolutely the right decision – trees were bent all over the race course, roads were blocked, and if you stood still outside you’d hear the “pop” and “crash” of breaking limbs and falling trees in the woods about every twenty or thirty seconds.
But Saturday there was skate sprint racing in good old New England winter weather. Rain. Rain on a base of mixed new and manmade snow. The snow was the kind of packing wet snow that I call “plastic” – a term that I first heard from Mike Mappin up in Canada, and it’s very descriptive of snow that is moving like a single, contiguous substance – like plasticine. Often, in conditions like that, it’s important to have stiff skis, and the grind isn’t as critical. In expectation for that type of snow I took a stiff pair of skis that I thought would work well, with a one-off grind for the conditions. It looks like a Christmas tree – the kind of grind I usually like to make fun of. There were lots of things that would work well in those conditions. A lot of people had great skis on L2-0S on Violet skis all day long. But my special Christmas Tree grind was good, so that was fun!
For wax we had good skis on hfC9 liquid. We ran a handful of other things, and perhaps the most interesting was the hfC1 anti-ice fluoro spray, which had a great top-end according to Mike Wynn – my ace tester. We also tested a bunch of powders, and the C139 CODE powder for wet conditions was CLEARLY the best. The C139 was perhaps a little better than the hfC9 liquid alone, but the hfC9 on top of C139 was really outstanding. We also ran the Red Creek Coarse riller. It was a fun day to do some low-key race waxing and remember how the whole scene goes. That part is important, because out next stop is US Nationals!
Well, that’s almost true. First, we’re headed out to Aspen, CO, to do a weekend of clinics with the crew at the Aspen XC Center. Our friend Dave Peterson asked us to come out, and this is when it all worked out. Amy will start driving tomorrow morning, and Gunnar and I will fly on Thursday and meet her at the Denver airport. It’s sort of a like a hail-Mary pass. Go long Amy!
Yup, I’m getting kind of punchy now. We just finished grinding the last batch before the Christmas/New Years/Nationals holiday. Some more packing and shipping to do yet, and then back in the shop on January 13th.