Nate Brown drove to Crested Butte last night, after spending much of Thursday working up a BNS test fleet. He called this morning, while thawing his feet after testing. The word, in a word, is "cold".

Air temp and snow surface temp at 9AM were both -15C. But the deeper snow temp was -25C. This means that the snowpack is really well chilled, and will take a while to warm up. The conditions and grooming are impeccable. They're running a big alpine groomer in town, and are planning to do the final grooming at 4AM Saturday morning, according to Nate and whatever inside information he has managed to dredge up.

Nate's test this morning wasn't extensive. He tested Matrix Green, Matrix Blue, SkiGo HF Green, and a special test wax for paraffins. For powders he tested SkiGo C105 and Holmenkol Cold 59 over Matrix Blue. Matrix Green was the clear winner for paraffins, based primarily on its consistency. This was particularly true close to race start time. As temps warmed a bit the other paraffins came into play.

The Cold 59 was the fastest ski by far. C105 wasn't as good, but it did speed up the matrix blue. We didn't prepare any fluoroblock optimizers. We'll test those in the morning, starting with the Holmenkol Cold Block and the C105 block.

Forecast & Recommendation:

Overnight lows will be below zero, further refrigerating and already cold snow pack. Expect cold and aggressive snow in the morning. The 4AM grooming should ensure that there is old snow near the surface, even if light snowfall materializes. If there's a real snow storm, then all bets are off!

We recommend a well hardened base, with a cold paraffin. We're putting Matrix green on here. Start Green, Toko HF Blue or Swix LF4 would also be good bets. I would recommend a cold powder such as C380 or Toko cold powder if you don't want to pursue the  pure fluoro solution.

For the skis we're preparing in-house, we'll use the Cold 59 powder and plan to work with optimizers in the morning.