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Final Birkie Wax Discussion & Recommendation
The Birkie storm delivered all that the forecast promised, and temperatures have dropped on the back side of the storm, as advertised. Jeff Tumbleson’s note this morning indicated that the current conditions look perfect for 330C powder. The 330C is a World Cup CODE powder for colder new snow – it runs very similar in […]
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Birkie Forecast Update
The forecast for Birkieland & Birkietime has shifted toward the snowy and cold end of the spectrum in the last couple of days. As of now, we’re feeling pretty solid with a recommendation of hfC21.1 powder. The 330C powder that I was leaning toward a couple of days ago still has a real shot – […]
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Birkie Wax Testing & Planning
The Olympic venue here in Russia has been downright tropical lately, so it takes a real mental adjustment for me to make sense of Jeff Tumbleson’s testing reports from the Birkie trail. But Jeff has been providing enough information, and a small touch of the fever has permeated my Olympic mindset, so I’ll hazard some […]
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Kick Wax Observations Redux
Last year in January we published this article. Since then we’ve had a number of requests for the link. I figured it would be a good idea to re-publish it. I considered updating it, but I think it’s pretty good as it is… Kick Waxing – Early season testing lessons. The snow we received right […]
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US National Championship – Brief Notes
The week at Soldier Hollow was a great opportunity for us to do some intensive testing. You can’t possibly learn so much, so fast, when you’re not in a competition setting. We won’t make any outlandish claims about having the best wax or service, but we were very satisfied with our results over the week. […]
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Distance Skate Day Discussion
Today was a good day. We woke up to falling snow, and temperatures warmer than what had been forecast, so it would have been reasonable to expect things to go in a very different direction than yesterday’s testing had indicated. But, for the most part, things held steady for us and we were able to […]
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US Nationals – Mass Start Skate Testing
We’ve been pretty busy here, and haven’t provided a lot of updates. But we’ve learned a lot, and had some good success. I’ll write up a full report on the whole week once we’re home. In the meantime – here are some ideas for tomorrow’s skate races. Paraffins have been fairly consistent for us all […]
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US Nationals Day 2 – Pre Race Testing
Today was our first full day of testing, and we ran a whole bunch of tests. It’s alway necessary to test a lot early in a week like this to get a good picture of how things are working. It’s late, and we’ve got an early morning start to race day tomorrow, so I’ll make […]
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US Nationals Set-Up and Testing Day 1
We arrived in Heber City, Utah, yesterday evening, in time to unload a huge amount of stuff from the car. Erik Mundahl flew in yesterday as well, and this morning we started setting up shop for a week of testing and waxing race skis at US Nationals. We didn’t have time to put together a […]
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Craftsbury Ice-Out & Packing for Nationals
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 […]
