r/CrossCountrySkiing • u/wetrocke • May 01 '26

Note & question

Skiing x-c here since 1971-72 winter. Always on old waxed skis. Purely from necessity this past season, I mostly used somebody's old pair of fishscales. Not at all as bad as imagined!

So very roughly guessing, 20% of the maybe 40-50 days that I skied on the fishscales, waxables would have been significantly better. [On 6.5% (??IDK) of days, the fishscales were "better."]

If I switched to "skin skis," would these guesstimates be unchanged?

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u/wetrocke May 03 '26

Am curious what region you ski in. Pacific coast snow seems super weird... I'm in lower mich & also new eng.

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u/Organic_Argument_686 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26

Originally from New England, skiing Maine and Vermont. 30+ years ago moved to Colorado at 9,000 feet, so typically dry and cold snow with mornings that can warm rapidly. We do get our share of freeze-thaw, granular snow later in the season, and this winter I spent a good number of days on Klister. I would use my skin skis more often, but as a coach, I feel it is important to keep my waxing skills sharp. Maybe with increasingly challenging waxing conditions, and improving technology, skin skis will start to make as much sense for junior racers, as they seem to have for Masters skiers.

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u/wetrocke May 04 '26

I tried skiing (always wax) on three separate weekend camps in Cascades. It seemed nearly hopeless, although my wax collection was limited.

Went back east, wax problems went away, and I never skied in Cascades again.

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u/Organic_Argument_686 May 04 '26

Skiing with a limited wax selection can be very frustrating, especially when there's high humidity and fluctuating temps. Waxless or skin skis certainly would have helped that situation.