Category: Uncategorized

Here’s our new grind menu. Those of you with good sleuthing skills will probably detect through your powers of observation that it’s the same as our old grind menu. What gives? What happened to all the talk of new grinds? We’ve decided not to put any new structures on the menu for this season. It’s […]

It’s been a while since we had a functional ski request form on the website. The old web-based form attracted huge numbers of junk responses, and exposed various security issues in the website that at one point crashed the whole site. So, we’ve got to a PDF version. I’m certain there’s a way to make […]

I’ve written a lot (maybe too much) over the years about ski selection. Since we returned to Vermont, Amy has been an equal partner in ski selection. This year she has handled the ski picks and inventory selection for all of our women’s skis. We work together through every step of the process, comparing notes […]

We’ve just unpacked our first shipment of Salomon bindings for the season, and had to take some photos of the new Pilot Carbon Skate bindings. We’ve worked with these on World Cup skis for the past two seasons, and know them to be functional, reliable, and light weight (130g per ski compared with 160g per […]

When ski companies produce a model and support it with marketing material they provide a very general outline of what the ski actually is. They focus on specifically marketable factors, like new materials or construction methods (e.g. cold base-bonding with the Fischer Speedmax), or camber profile features (like variable tip splay with Madshus REDline). These […]

Heart rate monitors are a nearly universal tool in endurance athletics. I’ve owned more of them than I can recall, and have been all over the spectrum of adherence, from religiously following training zones, to ditching the monitor for years at a time. On balance I’ve come down on the side of training by feel, […]

When somebody you love dies it’s easy to find yourself in a mindset where it feels as though it’s something that’s happening to you. When it hits twice in fairly quick succession, you can really start to feel put-upon. It’s important to remember how big our social networks are; how many people share the feelings […]

Seeing that it is the start of the training season for Nordic skiers, it seems like a good time to recap some of my highlights from this past year and also talk about some of the things I am looking forward to this upcoming year at Caldwell Sport. We had a very busy winter season […]

2013-14 was an exciting season for new products. Last Spring we wrote a series of previews of the Speedmax model from Fischer and the REDline model from Madshus. We’ve now had a full season of feedback from our own testing, and from customers to feed into the grading calculator. Here’s the report card, including our […]

Grind development is an ongoing process; we’re always trying new ideas and looking for improved performance.  While the development work is steady, progress comes in fits and starts. The last time we had a real breakthrough in structure development was 2011, when we found success with S2-1X, S1-0X, L2-0, and other grinds built on those […]