Ski service was hardly the highlight of the weekend, but I charged a tank of gas to the BNS credit card, so I’d better write a little something about skis. The most notable circumstance of the past few days in Aspen has been the major temperature spike in the late morning. Today was no exception. The snowpack in Snowmass this morning was cold and dry. I ran feel tests of Mid 02, FC8X and Mid 08. The results mirrored yesterday’s afternoon speed trap and feel testing, with Mid 02 a little ahead of FC8X, and Mid 08 good, but not quite on par with those two. I also tested fluoroblocks, and found C22 to be the best of what I tested. C22 has a massive range as a block, and given its performance at the start of the day I felt really confident in that. I was also interested in liquids today, since the snow had been through a couple of really warm days. Although it was recrystalized, fine and dry, it had seen enough action by today that I was interested to see what the liquids could do. C55/99 liquid provided really good top end speed and quite competitive climbing speed.
In the end I found that Mid02 powder uncovered, C22 and C55/99 each had their moments in the short loops I was skiing near the start. It didn’t make for an easy cut and dry call. In the end I ended up putting a number of different skis out with each of those work-ups, based on some subjective judgment calls involving ski type, grind, powder application, and time available until the start.
I think we had quite good skis today, and given that I had several different waxes on the snow, and many more grinds than that, I believe that hand structure was the biggest player in providing the range required to handle everything from the cold dry snow to the very warm conditions near the finish. We had great luck in Saturday’s classic race with the new Finite Finish press tool and the CP17 roller. I’m going to have to check the name on that one, but it’s very similar to the Holmenkol Cross Structure tool, and we ran it with just one roller. This is a 1.7mm spacing on a threaded roller drum which presses in an uninterrupted linear structure that crosses the ski base at a pretty good angle. Both the Finite Finish version and the Holmenkol version come with two rollers with opposite threads, which create a fishnet pattern on the ski when used together. The intersections of the fishnet seem to provide quite a turbulent interface and make for a good wet structure. With only one roller the structure skis much lighter, and is by far my favorite modification in dry and cold conditions. The liability with this structure is very limited, and the benefit is potentially huge. So we made sure to get that on all race skis today. Given the heat I ran the single drum twice on each ski. The combination of high altitude dry snow and really high solar effect make this structure solution a really good call for the high mountain west.
This weekend was a fun opportunity to provide service support to some of the regulars on the Nor Am circuit. We did skis both Saturday and Sunday for Brayton Osgood, Morgan Smyth, Evelyn Dong, and Caitlin Compton. We also did a lot of testing with the Sun Valley crew, and since Sylvan Ellefson won everything in sight I’ll claim that we worked closely with Dan Weiland as well.
We’ve had some great grind testing feedback from the Aspen area this year from Dave Peterson who has had one of our new test structures since the start of the season. Thanks to Dave’s fast skis, winning personality, and massive influence in the Aspen area I think I’ve put one of these new grinds on about 60% of the Aspen local’s skis in the past month. It was great to see that Dave’s been feeling the right stuff, as Sylvan, Leif Zimmerman and Brayton Osgood grabbed three of the top four places in today’s race on grinds from this new series. Leif skied on a pair of BNS demo skis that I offered to him at the start, which is always a good feeling.
In addition to the high-rolling Nor Am crowd we got to work with a good bunch of the usual suspects this weekend. Big thanks to Dave and Kathy Wickum for hooking us up with completely over-the-top accommodations. Dave and Nate Brown pulled a couple of long evening service sessions helping me get skis ready, which meant some extra hours of sleep (for me, not them). Amy got in a couple of solid race efforts, including a thoroughly non-embarrassing 14th place in today’s race. Lenka came down sick just in time to miss out on another rematch, but my guess is that she would have taken Amy if she’d been healthy. John Crimaldi beat Amy by a minute forty five today, and we already know that he’s not quite up to Lenka speed from the past couple of races. Actually, I think Lenka could have won today, but she’ll just have to wait until Spring Series for her next assault on the Super Tour. Nathan Stayed home this weekend to do some more secret training for his top-secret racing objective a little later in the season. I think these sessions had something to do with inventory numbers and pre-season ordering.
Thanks to the folks in Aspen for putting together such a great event. Brayton, Nate and I skied the course (again, for those two) this afternoon. I can’t say enough about the course, the grooming, and the overall quality of the experience. The only complaints I heard this weekend were about the lack of beer at the finish (Crimaldi) and a sunburned forehead (Nate). Brayton says that if they just ran the whole Supertour in Aspen he might put off retirement from full time racing for another year.