Boulder Mountain Tour - Nathan Schultz

I arrived in Sun Valley Wednesday night to cover the Boulder Mountain Tour. I had some great help from Jim Santa, who manages the local shop Sturtevant’s, but we still had a lot to do with testing, preparing skis and running two clinics leading up to the race.  Zach had waxed up one of our test fleets before I left the shop and we had it easy to jump on the snow early Thursday morning for our first testing. 

The conditions were typical Boulder Mountain Tour: fast, hard track with spectacular weather.  I worked with Eric and Joe Jensen to test skis at Prairie Creek, at roughly the 10km mark of the race.  We ran 12 pairs of skis through the speed trap and then tested them by feel, skiing through some shade and into the sun to find the best wax across the varying snow.  The snow was really old and had basically transformed into hard, round ice pellets.  On the drive back down to town I plugged in the results.  We test everything blind so that we don’t know what is on the ski until we look it up in the notebook after testing is complete.

The results were really interesting.  With fairly cold (-10C) temps and low humidity, we expected mid-range waxes to dominate the test, but instead found three groups of waxes that were running.  The cold waxes were running very well, showing that the aggressive transformed snow needed the ski bases to be hardened.  We also found that the higher fluoro content waxes ran well, so we needed to find something extremely hard with high fluoro content.  We also ran one test with a pair of skis with Matrix Blue on top, and another pair with SkiGo LF Graphite underneath with Matrix Blue on top.  The graphite underlayer made the skis 0.83% faster in the speed trap.  In a race that would take about 70 minutes, that is a 35 second difference.

SkiGo HF Violet is famous for handling aggressive snow and it won the test for paraffin that did not have the graphite underlayer, with Swix HF7 coming in a close second.  On our second test fleet, Start HF80 destroyed everything else, showing that the combination of hardness and High Fluoro content was going to be the ticket to fast skis.  We stopped at a few locations along the trail to confirm snow temps and conditions as we drove back down towards town.

Waxing for the race  looked like it would be easy until we showed up Friday morning to test fluoro powders.  There was a huge inversion with temps of 10F down low with the break point about 5km from the finish.  By the time we pulled off to test at Prairie Creek, the air temp was 40F, the snow was 32F (0C) and damp.  We tested 5 fluoro powders and 3 paraffins in the speed trap and then Jim and the Jensens tested structure while I put on top coats and tested them by feel.  When we left at noon, there was ankle-deep slush and the temp was 44F.

Our second set of test results was hard to interpret.  The mid-range fluoros were working best despite the sopping wet snow, and the weather forecast threw more uncertainty into the mix with a prediction of “unsettled” weather.  It was difficult to predict what we would see Saturday morning at the race, making the responsibility of a wax tech who had to make the call.  When I wax my own skis, I generally have 2 or three pairs I can wax up, with several backup options to handle different weather scenarios.  As it stood, I had 12 pairs of customers skis to wax, and only one pair for each person. 

I prepped all of the skis with LF Graphite and Matrix Blue, which had dominated the test that morning, even in the sloppy wet snow.  At 9PM, I took a walk around the block to figure out what I should do.  I could see stars, but it was raining and the air temp was 34F.  I decided that I had to just make a decision and get up early and fix it if things changed.  I went with Holmenkol Mid powder because it had run very well that morning, went home and waxed up all of the pairs, applied Finite Finish V05 hand structure lightly, corked in C22 solid and packed them into the bag for the morning.  I then waxed up 4 pairs of test skis with some really wet options to try out against what I had put on everyone’s race skis.

In bed by midnight, up by 5AM to go test.  I arrived at the race start to find that the temperature was right around freezing and everything had been coated by a layer of ice.  The groomers had not made it to the finish yet, so I drove up the course until I found some groomed track to test the skis.  With some new snow mixed into the old, I was worried that it was going to change things, but out of the test skis I had, the Mid Powder was still running fastest, which was a lucky break for me.

Alley Loop Report - Zach Caldwell

Amy and Gunnar and I rolled into Crested Butte at 10:00PM Friday night with temps at 10F and dropping. Our forecast and wax call was looking good, and we went to be ready for a cold morning. However, Saturday morning didn’t quite pan out the way we figured it would. Temps at 7:00 when we headed out to start testing with Nate Brown were already at 18 degrees, and snow was accumulating on the ground.

In spite of the cold, we found the new snow to be starchy cold, and the Holmenkol Cold 59 powder we had put on the day before was running as well as anything on our test skis. Uncharacteristically, we didn’t find the fluoroblocks to be doing much of anything. So, for the most part we left things as they were and people were generally quite pleased with the skis. Dave Wickum might have appreciated a little more speed at points out there, but he figured that “everybody was in the same boat” (that’s code for “my skis sucked”).

We were all pretty primed for a huge BNS celebrity death match between Lenka and Amy. There’s some history here. Lenka has raced Caldwells on two occasions, and been beat both times. Last year at the Governor’s cup Amy chased her down in the final few Kilometers. This year in the Governor’s cup it was my turn to apply the beating. AND, prior to departing for Crested Butte Amy just completely wiped the floor with Lenka in an arm wrestling competition. So it was with much anticipation that we all awaited the outcome of the Alley Loop. Privately, some of us kind of wondered if Lenka actually has as much game as people like to say.

TD Bank Eastern Cups at Trapp Family Lodge - Shane McDowell

The opening day of the eastern cups at Trapp Family started off with an individual start 5k skate for women and a 10k skate for men.  This race was also coupled with a College Carnival, which allowed for some of the fastest skiers in the east to show what they were made of.  With all of the new snow that the east coast has received over the past few weeks the skiing has been excellent.  Early in the day testing showed that SkiGo HF Blue was fastest for parrafins, while C105 powder and C105 solid were our winners for powders and top coats.  As the day wore on and we continued to test, the weather began to warm.  With the temperature change, Holmenkol Matrix Red was our leader in the paraffin test with SkiGo C105 powder still being fastest for the powders.  For top coats SkiGo C55/99 fluid was our fastest.

                The second day of racing featured 10 and 15k individual start classic races for women and men and 5k classic for J2’s.  This day was a little trickier for kick waxing, as about 6 inches of wet snow fell the night before, causing the snow to act warmer than what the temperature was reflecting.  For glide we recommended SkiGo HF Blue and SkiGo C105 for the morning and Holmenkol Matrix Red for the afternoon.  For kick the morning tests showed that SkiGo HF Violet was kicking well.  This quickly changed as the tracks began to glaze and the temperature rose to the high twenties.  With further testing we found that Rode Violet Multigrade was kicking very well.  To try and speed it up a little we found that layering the Multigrade with Rode Super Blue made the wax  freer during gliding.  Other Kick waxes that were kicking well were Guru Red covered with Guru Extreme Hallgeir, while many skiers also went with SkiGo HF Red.

City of Lakes Loppet Report – Eric Pepper

Tom and I headed down to Minneapolis on Thursday to scout out wax testing and get settled in. We were able to get in quality testing on Friday both at Theordore Wirth and on the lakes.  We got some reports from a few racers confirming our results on Friday were still holding true on Saturday, we felt good about our recommendation and were psyched to wax up some skis.

Saturday was quite a scene. We got to the Vendor Village at 9am to setup for the 12 o’clock start. We were setup outside the main tent. It was nice to be outside and have a view of the happenings, even though it meant we were freezing until we finally got packed up and out of there at 8pm. The place was absolutely hopping. Bib pickup was packed, tons of people were watching the sprints, beer garden, food, and a bunch of super amped up Skijoring dogs made for quite the spectacle. We were able to help out a lot of people with recommendations specific to the race and for their future endeavors. It was great to have a chance to talk to so many people and get high quality product to them. Holmenkol Matrix Black/Blue and SkiGo C105 Powder were both in our recommendation and definitely two of the most sought after items. It’s really interesting to talk to so many people and see how much of an effect our efforts are having. There are a lot of people out there starved for information and we are doing our best to get it to them. Our BNS catalog this year has been a smashing hit, so if you don’t have it yet be sure to request a copy of check it out online in digital format.

The crowd for the Luminary Loppet was phenomenal. It took us a long time to get all of our gear packed up and dragged out to the trailer, but being around as thousands gathered for the night time tour was worth it. All shapes, sizes, abilities, ages you name it were represented out there. From the outside looking in it looked like a great event and I’m sure those involved had a great time.

For race morning we setup near the start, got customers their skis and helped out with general recommendations. Word was that our recommendations were still running well, it’s always great to get that feedback. Race morning was a bit chaotic with everyone filtering into the start area. One gentleman new to the sport came to our tent because he wasn’t sure his skis were waxed right and they weren’t gliding well. I took at look at the bases and I think my heart nearly stopped. He had been sold some spray on klister and had applied it tip to tail on his SKATE skis, it was like nothing I had seen before and about 1/2cm thick. With a little help from the guys at the Hoigaard’s tent I went to work with the only tool I had handy, a basic plastic klister spatula. I would have killed to have some wax remover, a putty knife, and a basic rub on wax available for the guy. Lesson learned… from now on I won’t be leaving that stuff 10 miles away in the trailer and it will be coming to the start line with me. I hope he made it…

Thank you to the City of Lakes Loppet Nordic Ski Foundation and all the volunteers who made it happen, good times had by all.