Let me begin by heaping scorn upon waxless skis of all kinds. Zero skis and various forms of “hairies” have a secure place in the pantheon of superior performance solutions; I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the various fishscales, other no-wax patterns, and more recently, mohair skins, that promise versatile and easy solutions to classic skiing in all conditions. Bah.
My fundamental feeling is that wax is part of classic skiing, and it’s not the hardest part. The hardest part is learning to ski well, and getting that part depends in large degree on a clear feeling of contrast between kick and glide. When your ski is buzzing under your foot it’s really hard to develop the sensitivity and timing to ski well.
The kick in classic skiing is not digital. It’s not instantaneous, and it’s not off-and-on. The kick has shape. In many conditions you have to feel your way into the kick, and when the right signals come back, you commit to the motion. All of this happens quickly, but you can feel it happening. When you have a good wax job – especially when you’re running a fairly elastic base wax, there is a “hook-up” period – a slight delay that leads to a really secure grip. Often you have to be just a bit patient – if you try to grab the kick with full force too early, you’ll shear it off the base of the track and be left spinning your wheels. Fishscales don’t give you this feeling. They’re hard – they have no “give”. The rare conditions where fishscales are the perfect solution have a very plastic snowpack with a bit of flexibility built into it. But in general fishscales lack sensitivity, and are just loud and slow. And god-forbid you try to edge a corner on them – you’re likely to fall on your face.
The skin skis I’ve tried before (to be fair, it’s only been three pairs) haven’t been any better. They’ve been slow, of course. But the kick has also been problematic. They start to give you the right feeling, and then – just as you’re about to commit – the just let go. I feel as though the hairs “flip” – just reverse and let go. Good for shuffling like you’re on a nordictrack, but not for impulsive kicking.
OK. Enough with the derision. You understand that I don’t like waxless skis. Yesterday we received three or four inches of dense sleet. Perfect base to cover our bare ground. It was topped off with a bit of freezing rain – just to solidify the crust. And today we had a super light dusting of snow, turning to misty rain at about +1C. I think that Vauhti Universal Gold klister would have been excellent straight-up, but I decided to test the Intelligrips against my tried and true Fischer RCS Crowns. I’m not in love with the crowns, but they’re about as good as crowns get, so I figured that was a fair standard for comparison.
So… I liked the Intelligrips. Before I get all positive and happy, I should reiterate; they are not a racing solution. They’re slow. The pair I took out is a 200cm pair rated for 50-65kg, which is clearly soft for my 66kgs (that was before Christmas breakfast at Osgoods). It was a bit of a toss up which pair would have been faster – the crowns felt perhaps a bit faster on average, but like all crowns they are buzzy, and when they hitch up under foot, they hitch-up hard. The Intelligrips felt more like wax. Not perfect wax – even pretty slow wax. But what they had (which I definitely hadn’t felt from a no-wax ski before) is that sensation of hook-up in the kicking action. I could modulate the feeling of the ski by weighting my foot differently, and I could develop the kick with sensitivity. As I would expect, crust skiing on very uneven ground, I missed some kicks. But that’s part of the game.
It’s interesting to note that I started skiing with the Intelligrips mounted at -1 on the NIS plate – 5mm behind the neutral position. I usually end up liking Madshus skis in that position. I tested one a bit further back and found that, much to my surprise, it got very slow and grabby. That’s entirely counter-intuitive; usually when we move the bindings back the pocket opens up and we get more speed. But on these the best performance was clearly with the bindings mounted right at the neutral position. Much smoother and more predictable glide, and really normal and good feeling on the kick. I never had the sensation of the mohair reversing, or slipping out. Maybe Madshus has found a better solution for their insert material than what I’ve used in the past. And I liked the camber and action of the skis and the way that it worked with the mohair. I felt that the kick was a dynamic process with some flexibility – even on a ski that is by all measures “too soft”.
I ended up ripping around the woods for a solid hour, and enjoyed every minute of it. Notably, there were some downhills on sketchy crust-covered bumpy terrain where the crowns would have put me on my face half a dozen times, and the Intelligrips were just fun. I don’t anticipate ever using waxless skis in perfect tracks – if anything they’ll be solution for days like today. They’re far from silent – instead of buzzing they kind of howl. But the feeling isn’t more like a tolerably slow wax job (without icing) than a horrible mechanical interface. Next time I’ll grab a pair better fit for my size and we’ll see if it speeds things up and quiets things down. No word on durability or anything like that – I don’t see a good way to replace the mohair, and I have no way of knowing how long they’ll last. I don’t expect to find out either – I’ll be an infrequent waxless skier at best. But when necessity dictates waxless, I know which skis I’ll be grabbing!