Skis 2014 ?

The season is over, the "lysløype" closed for business. Wrap a heavy cloth on the bell's clapper and keep the dog still and quiet with a bone. My red wax and clister are no more.

This year I had guessed that sports (training) skis would be my next move. I ponder on a nanotech future with two pairs of light, sports skis for "blue" and "red" conditions and no more waxing, ever. I think of buying a pair of Zero rubbing skis from a  racer dissatisfied with them, and tweaking them to work in our usual -6'c to plus 2 we tend to get. But then it comes down to next autumns slightly over priced ski-packages with dubious boots.

However the wise money, if I get a 2013 bonus payment, would not be on any of the above and here is why.

This season has been hard- rock hard! We had a mild period followed by snow in time for Christmas. More gradual snow came, but horror of horrors, there was a mild period which thawed the stuff back, not once but twice. So things got icey in January and early february. On the high mountain sides the mild whisked through, depositing only more snow and temperatures never over plus one or so.  Just when we thought it was all over we got 75cm of new snow, wet at sea level but even at 50m up it was very doable and lay on top of icey ground like a natural laid on super cooled ice rink.

Some areas had blow off an drifting making for incredibly awkward waxing: new snow, filled spor and then suddenly onto old snow and outright ice!

I discovered that my kick was not doing so well on weight transfer and glide so that actually is kind of the first thing against skinny-skis. I have not got my weight right on broader tour skis yet. But lighter skis may be an advantage....??

Icey conditions and old, corn snow perpetuated over many weeks until last night it became just a big old trail of birch flavoured slush puppy. And I found the UK anchoring technique involuntarily and on a couple of bail-outs due to complete lack of control!

So after this season and the last, and many before that I am the type who doesnt want to travel far for skiing, and want to tackle hilly courses and use the piste (skating side/middle lane) because it is really rewarding to downhill out the spor.

So having had a few "plough negative" situations too many this year, given I have been at this lark a while, i think that in fact steel edges are on the menu for next season.

You can now get really skinny steel edge skis which seem to be less than 5 cm broad. Maybe they dont do my legnth. But then there are plenty other "fell ski" which are light and have a more standrad XC pre-tension in the arch (rather than the longer classic mountain ski arch)

I see with steel edges I can perfect my technique a bit more and most importanly gain confidence. Also I can try telemarking, which I have only pulled off a couple of times on standard XC plastic edge skis. Then if I decide to opt for lighter skis, I have a pair of Fjell skis and icey-dicey course skis and just a pair for teaching the kids how to plough and towing their sledges.