Every year there are new waxes that hit the market, and it can be difficult to figure out what’s hype, and what’s really a step forward in performance. We don’t have any answers about what new stuff might be more hype than substance; in general we like to wait for new products to prove themselves before we jump on the bandwagon. But where we’ve already got positive experience with products that become available, we’re excited to pass it along. Here are a few newly available waxes that we’re excited about for this season.
I’ve sprinkled some links around here to our e-commerce site so that you can impulsively buy this stuff. Think of it like a treasure hunt – if you can find the link, then you can buy the wax! Fun! Marketing!
Vauhti has released a new line of hfC fluorocarbons, based on some of their very successful World Cup CODE powders. We’re excited about the whole line-up, but the new hfC9.1 for warm conditions is the one that really blew our minds last season. I have a list of favorite fluoros for warm conditions that includes Ski*Go C22, Rex TK50, Star FW, and various others for specific conditions. My list does not include the old hfC9, which has had its moments, but overall hasn’t been a consistent winner in the field. Last winter we started test the C139 CODE powder, which had been impressive in testing the previous spring for Vauhti, and it started winning tests. It won in pouring rain on manmade snow in Craftsbury in December. It won in mixed old and new snow and violet hardwax conditions in Utah in January. It won in wet snow in Val di Fiemme in February where Amy was on the US service team at World Junior and U23 Championships. It compared favorably to our favorites in a wide variety of conditions, from moist fine snow to saturated slush.
The C139 powder has been released this season as hfC9.1, and is also available in liquid and block versions. We haven’t tested those applications, and are really excited to start gathering information on them. The Vauhti liquids utilize a liquidized perfluorocarbon carrying media rather than a solvent, and with the other fluoro products this fluid seems to add flexibility and range to the performance profile. So we’re extremely optimistic about the hfC9.1 liquid. Vauhti has labeled it as a “Sprint” liquid for this season, and I’m still waiting to find out whether this is because it’s not as durable as we’ve come to expect from the hfC liquids. I can’t think why this would be the case, but I’ll be sure to pass along any information and test results we gather.
Rode Race Service -1/-7 & -3/-10
We’ve written quite a bit about the Rode Topline waxes in the past couple of years. As we understand it, these waxes are an extension of the Topline series. While some Rode race service waxes (like Super Gialla) are mixes of the standard Rode line, these two are all new materials. And like the other Topline hardwaxes, they’re most notable for their outstanding bulk properties. These are not waxes to be applied as a thin cover of an existing wax job – these waxes can and should form the backbone of your wax job.
-1 -7 This wax is comparable to the venerable Super Blue in range, and is worth testing against the whole range of blues, including Super Extra, and Weiss, not to mention waxes from other companies. In the past two years we’ve seen Super Blue win against -1 -7 on two occasions, once at US Nationals in Soldier Hollow last season. But on balance the -1 -7 has been outstanding. The wax has a notably “dry” feeling going on the ski; it is easy to apply in thin layers and spreads nicely with the cork. The real strength seems to be its outstanding speed at the colder and dryer end of the range, but truth be told, the kick is also frequently more positive than other blues, and it runs well into the warm and moister end of the range as well. Durability seems excellent – this has been a frequent favorite for Erik Nilsson in his service work on the Ski Classics tour for Team Coop.
–3 -10 This wax is comparable to the Multigrade Blue (formerly labeled and forever known as “Blau”) from the normal range of Rode products. Blau has always had a reputation for speed (one World Cup waxer once told me it was glide wax for the kick zone). We’ve had the -3 -10 for one season less than the -1 -7, so we haven’t got as much experience with it. But it’s been outstanding in the colder range, with similar or better speed and more reliable kick than favorites like Rode Green or Blau, Vauhti K19, or others.
Last season in Sochi Oleg Ragilo got some tubes of test klister from Start – a standard prototype situation with a blank tube and some permanent marker writing on it. We were having good luck with Start klisters in testing – particularly the MFW Yellow which I was using alone for testing skis with athletes on a couple of training days. 
We used what appears to be the FHF30 (I can tell because that’s the one that looks like toothpaste) as a cover wax over a standard klister job, and had clearly enhanced speed with no loss of kick.
Start says that these waxes can be used either as a finishing layer, or as the main kicking klister. In general I’m skeptical about trying to speed up soft klister jobs with another layer – it seems like everything should just mix together. But experience from last season suggests that I should work with the idea more. I’ll be working with these FHF klisters at every opportunity this winter.
In my mind, the pinnacle of Swix klister development is the K22 universal, which is pretty much the standard of excellence among coarse snow universal klisters. I’ve never been impressed with Swix klisters in finer snow or trickier conditions. That may be a grossly unfair generalization, but it’s become part of my institutional “knowledge” over time. Last winter I saw the new KX40S for the first time in Toblach at the final pre-Olympic World Cup. You may remember that event as the one where Erik Bjornsen announced his presence on the World Cup with an 18th place finish with a tenacious performance, hanging onto Marcus Hellner’s second and third laps – Hellner was on his way to a third place. To put it into context, with that performance Erik joins Kris Freeman and Noah Hoffman on the list of active US men to have scored World Cup points in an individual start distance race. It’s easy to forget, with all the success that the women and sprinters have had, how rare that achievement remains for US skiers.
That was a tricky day, and the race field ended up about equally divided between zeros and klister. Alexander Legkov won on zeros, but it seemed that more of the top skiers were on klister. The US guys were on zeros, aside from Bjornsen. I was working on the same table that day as Erik’s coach and waxer, Erik Flora. I’ve shared a wax table with Erik Flora at the last three major championships, and have been his roommate at two of them. I believe Erik is one of the most creative and outstanding classic waxers I’ve seen, and on that day in Toblach he was giddy about the skis he had running with KX40S. Erik Flora is not prone to making strong statements, but about the third or fourth time he said “I really like this klister” I took another look.
I was already committed to putting Noah Hoffman on a really slick pair of zeros for that day in Toblach, but I’ve worked with the KX40S some more since then, and I see what Flora was talking about. In tricky, glazing, fine-snow conditions where icing is a major concern, this wax seems to stay free of ice longer than most. I haven’t gotten far into using it as a mixing agent, but I’ll surely be carrying this one around in the future and leaning on it when we get into difficult waxing conditions. Keep it in mind, when zeros seem like the only solution, but offer marginal kick. It has the tackiness to kick on a fairly thin layer, and can work well on warm drywax skis in glazing conditions – something to consider for people or teams who don’t have six or seven pairs of klister skis to test at different strengths.
Racing Red has been a staple in our kick wax line-up for several years. It’s a factory-produced pre-mix from Star, based on requests from World Cup waxers, and it tends to provide outstanding speed in its range (which is more violet than traditional red). We’ve had great luck with Racing Red when elevating temperatures bring tricky and glazing conditions to a relatively dry snowpack. When the snowpack starts out moist, Racing Red seems to lack sufficient kick.
Last year we got ahold of some of the new Racing Yellow, which is another factory pre-mix which has done well in the slightly higher moisture range. This is a great addition for anybody who is interested in finding optimal performance in the narrow range of tricky conditions near freezing. There is a big difference between finding a wax that “works” and a wax that wins. Racing Yellow can be a winner if you give it a chance.