Furry Skis? The verdict on skin-skis (felleski)

Apparently skis with an integrated mohair skins are nothing all that new, and since patents  ran out accordongly some time ago, all the main XC makers now offer 'furry soled skis'. However is this all just a fad?

Historical Beginners Skis

Patterned waxless skis got a bad name because they were mostly the reserve of beginners' products. However Atomic offer quite a few tour good skis with pattern,  for the North American market in particular it seems, and Salomon also have some better skis with rough patterns. Fischer have a near pro level ski (XCS carbon if I remember right) with their own patented pattern, which work quite well in my personal experience, and many an  "Oslo 50" or Birkebeiner competitor has a pair of these in reserve in the car in case conditions are going to vary greatly.

With Waxless patterned skis, by in large you get a longer zone which is patterned than that which is waxed or clistered up, because it has to grip in all conditions. This means they usually make a lot of noise on down hills, which means friction of course in what should be the glide zone. I would recommend grinding off and polishing the front of many of the patterned sections and taking either a short skin or clister with you for the more difficult days, rather than enduring the noise and extra friciton of one-size-fits all.  Also in some conditions the bare plastic will ball up with snow, so in fact they are no totally preparation free, they need to be glided.

Do the new integrated skin-skis make up for the short-comings of the older waxless, patterned skis?

Enter the Flush Furry Ski-:Skintec TM from Atomic.

Furry skis got a far more serious start with Atomic betting on a high end training ski, almost three times the peice of a cheap waxless starter ski. The magnetic system was all verry high tech, but it wasn't long before they glued in a standard, inch across skin on a wider range of training skis. We say training,  but these skis have already been used by many amateurs in Birkebeiner and other races where height and /or snow conditions are likely to change dramatically, making a clister or soft wax lowland wax job a balling mess in the new snow of the hill.

Since their inception, I have been itching to get my hands on a pair, but the investment /percieved risk held me back. Last season I managed to pick up a pair of used 208cm atomic skintecs with glued-in skin. This was a good two birds with oine stone purchase, because they were also my first "straight" sports skis ie minimal side cut and no concession to 'off piste'..... also my first with any carbon fibre in them.

 Pleased ? Yes very much so, but only as pleased as I could be with the conditions !

All Skis Have Their Limits or 'Envelope' of Performance

In truth, getting out in the ski-tracks without worrying is a bit misleading. As with your ordinary, common-or-garden training skis, there are going to be days when the spring (aka flex or spenn) in the ski is too hard - soft conditions render a hard tensioned ski like mine difficult- they become a labour, while ordinary or firm conditions seem to be no problem.

 Then we come to snow type, and here we have limitations of the untreated skin-ski. They don't like fine, new snow, and at the other extreme, very compressed or 'transformed' snow, aka concrete in the tram lines, neither of which are good for traction. Unfortunetly, both of which are typical of our southern Norwegian winter with dumps, wind blown poweder and then also thaw back or long term ing of old snow in cold , dry periods.

However in typical blue' and 'Lillac' conditions, to be found in  higher 'pastures' or better days, ie silky ski runs, then the skis are mile-eaters, with zero prep' (if you have the glider right or have Kuzmin scraped them!) . In slightly softer base snow then you get quite a lot of wirring noise but the friction seems minimal.

 You can easily argue that even a 5 minute,  cabin porch job of blue or purple fluoro' wax could behave just the same without any of the accompanying skin friction. There is the 'rub' then, just to be punny. In good conditions you would expect a simple, good wax job to grip and last.

When you get up to red-wax and clister conditions and into wet snow, the skin works really well until it obviously becomes waterlogged, when a decided suck happens. This required a 'rock' from toe to heel in order to break the suction on an otherwise fast down hill for me last week. In soft, wet conditions with a poor base, my skis are also so hard tensioned in their arch, that the tour becomes a slog in standard, kicking diagonal technique, and unrewardingly slow down hill due to friction and the narrow ski digging in. I've noticed that before, that my tour skis are nicer on softer base while folk were struggling. 

Everyone and their dog under 70 here however,  uses sports skis for "ski jogging' and I see why, like a racing bike with 120 psi tyres versus a shopper, you get a faster run in good conditions. But a wide skis have their time and place.

When you go over to concrete-like tram lines,  then you can forget a hard tension ski with a skin imho. There is no real traction more than a bare friction. Perhaps a softer spenn/flex will make for more press into the substrate crystals, but I am sceptical. However since the skis I have are hard tensioned, then I can double pole and then go over to fish bone, or be surprised with how grippy they are in the "skating" section between tracks. Here you get the first of two centre section surprises.

Firstly - The skin-ski grips well on coarse, crystalised or machine ground snow on the centre lane, where a waxed ski would either not grip well, or pick up crystals. 

Surprise two- this being because the skin usually has no pick up of snow crystals, unlike clister, red or sometimes even purple. The ski skates very, very well. Okay they are too long, and the poles will be too short, but I found all three main techniques worked well with the skis, where as wax skis will tend to judder and catch, or on coarse snow, loose their kick wax faster.

Conclusions - The Pros and Cons

So there are a couple of fringe benefits but what is the main thing? Well we get a lot of variable conditions here and sometimes a forecast of rain and sleet becomes heavy snow in reality. The main plus for me is then not having to strip back a soft wax or clister job. In hard conditions I get only about 12 km out of my best clister job, so i could rather pick a ski run where i can double pole, which is fantastic physical training.

In picking a ski, it is best to have grip for your style and expected snow conditions. So a hard spring (flex) in a ski can make for a lot more back slipping if you are not prepared to learn a more energetic technique innpushing down harder in a racing style.

We get a lot of conditions here in Southern Norway when one day is blue, the next red, then the tracks get old and need mechanical churning, then the crystals stick to your clister, then there is a freeze and new snow comes......Also the ski locations vary from 15m above sea level to 600m within a couple of hours from here, so you can expect to encounter variation day to day, place to place.

My last ski run though showed both the good and the evil of this particular pair of Atomics, with the eastern run to "Østertjenn" better for skins than waxes I believe, and a joy in all techniques, while the western section towards "Hekketjenn" had had sun and mild wind on it, and was just horrid for both the grip from the skin and the hard flex from the ski. That really brought it home to me, how poorer conditions are irritating!

Waxing Issues

So far I really, really enjoy these skis in good conditions and am prepared to try out the various products now available for keeping them waterlogg free, grippy or even clister grippy on the hard stuff, which is my main bug bear to date. No grip on the hard stuff, where an Ice Clister would be working for a while at least.

My next area of experiment is then in using wax and sprays ! This may seem to defy the point of skin skis. However the skis should be cleaned properly and then there are 'zero' conditioons when clogging crystals will be an issue, or wet condions when you get water logging and 'suck'. Swix have a cleaner spray and a prep' "skin glider" for this now.  There is also a spray wax which is for - i believe- new snow and icey conditions, which works a little like a hard wax but is optimised for the hairy substrate.

You can see that the skin does not reach further than half way up the sole of the binding, so you could -I suppose- wax this part on a hard day when the skin does not work or for soft, fine new snow.

Furthermore, on my skis and a couple of other models from the main manufacturers, the skin only comes back as far as the mid-sole. So there is a couple of inches in the "pocket" where i could use, for example, a blue-ice crystal.

Now I had tried "do it all" Start Grip Tape, with great success, but it had the same kind of limitations on hard packed snow, being a bit better on new snow though. However it wore out fairly quickly for the price on hard snow. Also I wanted to change to sportier skis, so I hit those two birds and am very pleased GIVEN good conditions. Crap conditions are just that, and I need a new indoor sport, or to splash out on Skate Ski Poles and boots for my end of sesson bargain skis i got and have toyed around with.

There is now a range of training skis and at least one, more tour oriented and so broader ski ( Salomon) on the market. I dare say there will be some back country skis with even longer fixed on skins, and perhaps the Salomon style slot system for adding a full legnth skin for steeper stuff. After all synthetic skins were first used for back country, and are now big sellers for the Randonee skier market.

Jumble Sale, soft flex , waxless skis, fun for slushy conditions !

I also have a pair of 'shopping' skis from a jumble sale, real 1979 types which are a wooden ski with a P-tex sole, and a classsic, long fish scale waxless pattern, over a 2 inch . These I had to force a tenner into the hand of the church elder for at the end of the jumble sale, he wanted rid off them! In 'old' snow I have a great time toddling around on these, skating and kicking, and relaxing. Not taking it too seriously in end of season slush, or up the pavement to the shops before the council scrape the snow off.

The moral here is think about what your level is, the right lengtrh and pre-tension in the ski for you and your ability or ambitions, and where and when you will be skiing. As a new beginner, if you are just going to do a weeks holiday or the odd weekend or dash out once a week, then a pair of well fitted patterned waxless will save you maybe a hundred quid/euros over a pair of skin skis. If though, you live in the mountains and want to get out often in well made tracks, and do some seruious training then yep, get a pair of skin skis with a kind of medium pre-tension for your weight, and also pay for some lessons with the money you save from buying a wax kit.

At the other end of the scale, as a ski racer, then a skin ski is going to be an extra ski for training. The atomic Skintec are quite a high end training ski with carbon fibre spring elements, at the price of racing skis, and were launched into this market.

 It will take you just about the life time of the ski to save back what you would have spent on grip waxes I dare say, it is more about saving time when conditions are changeable day to day or with altitude over the course of a race or tour.

So it is kind of horses for courses, and the greatest benefit are for those who never want to learn to wax up, or those where conditions are regularily from minus ten to plus three.


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Addenum - 11th March 2017

I am even more pleased with the skis after a week of skiing in what you could call typical easter conditions. Wet snow some days, some new, heavy snow others and finally a few days with 'trasnformed' snow churned and relayed by the machines.

Yesterday was a good example - the skins performed really well in the cold snow of morning , which was churned and firm to hard, but still with a light crystaline surface which gave excellent grip. Fish boning came in a little earlier than with softer snow of course.   As the day went on, the strong spring sunshine softened many areas and the ski continued to perform really well. So in a nutshell you may have gone out waxed on red only to find universal clister conditions prevailed later, thus you see the benefit of the skin.

My complaint about the day, was nothing to do with the skins, but the hard conditions on the pisted mid sections meant that my long, hard flex skis were very unstable in half plough or full plough and I fell really often, bottling out when I saw rocks ahead or streams showing through the tracks! With such good glide on firm snow available, a more 'compliant' soft.

Re-Conclusion!

If you can get a pair of Skin skis which match your height, weight and ability (see next blog!) then I would say for the average fun & fitness skier there is nothing holding you back. As a pair of training skis, it looks like all the top manufacturers are offering models which would please the hardest Oslo 50 'mile eater' amateur and even the odd Pro' could find these handy for training in variable conditions over say rising altitudes.

I look forward to integrated skins being included in a wider range of types of ski, towards the more tour oriented and the out and out race ski. 

Quick Wax

Illness has ruined what usually is mid season for me so I have time to reflect on a short, but quite sweet season on the white stuff this year...so far. A casual visit to our local library earlier day gave me both food for thought and grounds for some irritation.

Jørgen and Anders Ausland have written a nice, coffee table friendly book on buttering your skis, ahem, sorry a bit too literal i meant buttering the wax industry with your hard earned cash of course ! Everything from the expected flourine powders to something new on me 'diesel toppers". Give them their due, where simple V40 ontop of Toko green was good in their experience, there it was as a basic prep. Everything though involved using an iron and ideally having a waxing frame set up.

Ok they are pros and they are letti g you into the inner nerdland secrets of getting a world class wax. They also discuss a lot about ski types which is great for keen amateurs too, in explaining why some pairs juast dont work as well in certain conditions. This is a book aimed at the skier advancing to gain small margins, mainly by using lots of money, and a good bit of time. However it also gives asome good theory and some basics on gettng a good job and how understanding your skis and the on ground conditions will help.

I have nothing against irons , they dont need to cost much and your club may have its own loan kit or even a complete kittes out wax-hut with several to hand. Best used out of doors, especially with anything which is has flourocarbons. Not my cup of tea irons that is all.

For the feste or kick zone in english you dont really need an Iron, and as i suggest too, as an amateur you may want to consider Kizmun scraping insatead of stonwe ground with endless rounds of glider wax.

You need to do a good base job and that involves using sand paper, 120 grain is ok, to make a rougher surface for good absorption for the all important base layer. Witout the electric apparatus, fear not you can use a couple of different spray products or just rub and a hard wax on and cork it. I use swix green base wax spray, which dries on quickly and absorbs well, while still being good to cork in. It is also a good cold weather wax apparently, and in mild conditions it is fine to leave exposed on the front of the kick zone when a softwer kick wax is used on a shorter section.

The green base also is fine for universal and blue crystal hard clisters. Pro's and rank amateurs alike swear though by Swix base binder clister spray as the sole sister for the day clister. It too is a spray, but it seems to go on nice and thin and more evenly tjan the harder green spray wax. You can even do the reverse with this base, putting hard wax corked over but i smell messy. Pros do a super resistant base for distnace races whic is this spray with an ironed in hard wax, which takes fewer layers of clister or hard wax on top yet has a good longevity.

With sprays i recommend taping off the kickzone ends with ample tape so the guff doesnt gwt into the glide zone by accodent.

Thw green hard wax spray is easy to spread evenly, and to dry undoors but then pop the skis outside to cool to make for a good corking job. With no certain day conditiinss or crystal type then leave this be because you may want to use clister even down to -10c in old, compacted, icey tramlines. Also here we get incorrect weather forecassts in winter with an error up to -10'c. With falling snow in -18 any of the usual 'blue' waxes will be too soft and a green /arctic should be used.

With more predictavle conditions of a little milder on ground, then i use a blue flouro VR40 swixmontop of the blue, full legnth of the zone, two layers and that is then ready for the day wax, which is very likely to be more VR40. Flour VR products are in my experiwnce, much harder wearing than standard waxes and worth the price. I reckon that with soft mnountain resort snow for a season, that three layer base would last the whole season for me or many hundred klicks for a tourer or trainings mad compeititive skier. Watch out for the temperature range which is differwnt between V and VR btw !

The day wax can then go on top of this, and even a clister layer could be attempted, if you can warm the tube up !  In new or falling snow, you can use a harder wax, maybe to hit that lower temperature range with a ' special' like lillac V50 V45 for example, or more VR40 if it is colder. You probably want to wax back in about 5 cm from the end of the base wax, and be prepared to lenghten this to get better kick-traction.

For older, transformed hard and abrasive conditions you can use a softer wax thanbthe temperature indicator would say, but take it first 10cm in from the front mark on the kick zone. As mentioned for really old tracks with hard packed bases you can go over to clister, and i find blue a full 15-20 cm back which is just infront of the toe really, works well , and also a lkittle in from the heel as i am heavy and it tensds to teavwl backwards. Layer wise you could try one loing and a littlw layer of clister undee the sole of the shoe-binding.

Layers wise for hard wax, i cork in a pyramid with between three and six applications cooling between each with a VR flour product. The final layer is just 10-15cm mid sole. Quick ? Well relatively anyway, compared to ironing in flour-powder and using power tools........

Your skis dictate a lot about how long the kick zone will be for the day too. High camber skis will resist wear but may need a longer kick zone day layering or a sligjtly softer wax to get adesion. Vice versa for low camber skis which are most often more pliable too. You can always add more wax, while too much is there for the day, so shorter wax to thw heel fromsomewhere not that far infront of the toe is a good idea to trial out to see if you havea good feste-glide cmbination.

Conditions then dictate all, and that is contact temperature, air temp' forecast, snow or not, and finally state of ice crystal.

In the really typical thaw back, refreeze we get here in south Norway, then even a good, two layer on base binder clister job will only last maybe 15 to 20 k, and for me a 'good enough' may last even less, half of that since i am heavy. I just started using blue swix ice clistet, which gives great kick wittout picking up as much ice as universal, without going mobile back under the heel and with about 10-15 k for a single layer job out a tube from  50'c oven. I clistered just 5 cm forward from the front of the binding and to 3 cm i from the heel, to good effect as described.

The green base with two blue will last a while with soft waxes over it in less than silky condittions, and you can scrape off softer wax from on it to reaply say more VR40 if it gets colder.

I use a cheapo, shoe shine swix universal glider which is not any good under -8 'c. So i will be looking to Kizmun scrape my skis, or find  spray alternatives in cold and warm types.

Two final tips on temperatures and waxes.

Fistly, softer waxes generally need to be cooled well in order for them to cork on right, whereas 'green' start needs to be nearer room temperature for a good appl,ication. Clister wants to be put on your car air vent to warm on the way, cap scrwwed on hard mn

Secondly to all this, always let your skis cool in contatc with the snow preferably, for at leats 2 mins befoee you take off, other wise the good wax job may take off too !

Sticky Fingers and Skintec

Klister conditions continue....deepen in fact.

The local run was ill advised and needs both churning and light tramline driving. Ice. Klister eating steely tracks of hell according to a pensioner I met and i turned back to visit another local low level venue when it started to rain heavily.

Ditch the day.

I did however get to experiment with application of quick-klister. I think a lot of people are going to be using these sprays for training and in the pocket for longer races. They do need a little bit more time than at first may seem.

Quick and Dirty or a Good Solution ?

Swix quick klister is a pressurised clister in a spray can with foam diasappator / spreader top. It is like a fast shoe polish, although the width you spray out and spread on seems to be training ski wide, maybe by design. The base binder green clister is just a spray unfortunetly because the applicator is darn good.

What takes time in these products especially when outdoors is that the solvent used needs to evapourate. Otherwise your clister will just be abbraded off. At room temperature i waited two minutes and it was still too thin to be of use. I used my hobby crack lighter to gently blow away the solvent and got an instant good clister finish.

I have seen serious birkebeiner types at icey venues with blow torches and i guess they are using these to spread the clister.

Far better imho to spray on and get a very even layer and then heat off. The spray was as even as an iron on, and better than my painstaking oven pre heat home job sans iron.

Finally lying the ski kick zone gently on snow to let the clister set, which is a must do whatever the circumstances.

So given you are a little patient and understand what is going on, then you can get a very clean application at home or with the box warm from the car or using the crystal meth addict's  blue flame you can save the day without an iron.

There was actually enough clister on my skis from my trudge round drivheia anyway, but universal in spray seems a better way of doing things. Btw i had green v90 wax base binder with blue VR40 and the single long line of clister from the tube was 75% intact with the pocket under the sole just smoothed out. Flouronated waxes prove their worth again in wet conditions with clister hanging on better than non flour.

Forget the sticky stuff ?

Another coincidence is that i wandered into a G max to buy said quick-clister and i then of course wanted them to test the preload on the atomic skintecs they have on boot-binding-ski offer for about 400 euros. The 2000mm they had tolerate 100kg with the mohair being clear of smooth snow at least.

However it transpired that this is a variant without the change out magnetic insert system. Instead it has a glued on mohair which has no central "groove" but to my eye it looked like it was shorter. The ski is no doubt far lighter because there are no magnets and so on. I dare say it is just maching the sole which renders them ready for glue in mohair.

The skintec ski in this version then is really a high tech repeat of the mohair inserts of the late 70s i have read about. Both ski and glue technology, and magnets for the other type, have come a lon.g way since then.

So as a pair of zero skis for the amateur racer or all rounders for the time stressed parent of three then worth the bucks if you need a new pair this is a bargain with the package if the one insert works as it should.

Not that the lack of interchangeability scares me too much. The ski looked the same otherwise, and so has the same construction most likely, with the arch being symmetrical and compliant until you really kick-load it. This is going into their racing skis too.

The ski is a fairly broad training ski and i liked it; but i would want to spend about the same without boots but with the magnetic insert and two inserts to start with. I reckon a shorter kick hair glider insert and a super grip patterned combi mohair clister buster would be the type on inserts i would spend a bit on.

I have an acquaintance who happened to get old stock skintecs last year with inserts and he is almost 2m high so must have long, hard sprung ones. I must ask for a test run if my boots fit his binding type.