Wax report from CXC Team

Wed, Nov  30, 2011 - By Jason Cork

This year in Yellowstone, we brought a relatively small group (seven) of skiers and only one coach, so waxing had the potential to get hairy if conditions got completely sketchy. Luckily, we had awesome snow and weather for the four races, so we managed (with help from James Kyes and Bill Pierce from FAST Racing) to produce great skis with minimal drama.

Toko/Ian does a great job of producing race reports, so I'll just highlight some of our choices:

Wednesday, we based with HF Moly, as I thought that ran slightly better. The Moly is the same hardness as the Red, but I thought it might ("might") have run a little better on the few-days-old snow.

Friday's race, we ran on HF Moly and a mix of HF Blue/Red. It was tricky to chose glider, as the weather report was so vague.  For top powder, I had a cocktail of Jetstream Red and Blue. The girls had Jetstream Red Bloc and had great skis. For the guys, we ran HelX Red, which in retrospect wasn't the best idea -- a weird snow squall kicked up right after our guys started, and out west, the HelX seemed to slow quite a bit. The HelX was running slightly faster than the Bloc before the start, but the Bloc would have been a safer choice given the chance for snow that was predicted. My bad.  (Note from Ian: HelX, and from my experience liquid waxes, slow down in the Rockies when it is snowing.  I think this is because the snow falls "dry" here compared to in the rest of the country where HelX is great in new falling snow).

Saturday's race, we had the women on a HF Blue and Cold Powder pre-mix ("Monty"), and the guys on straight HF Blue. We covered both of them with Jetstream Blue. For kick, the new Blue twist-up was money for the women, covered with the harder Mint. For the men, we ran a short kicker of Red twister and covered with the Blue. We top-coated the women with HelX Blue, which ran awesome. By the time the guys went, HelX Red was about equal to the Blue, but given the rapid warming (and blue skies), I thought the Red was a safe bet. Even though we got burned a little bit the day before, I know it's an excellent product, and for the conditions, it ran great.  (Note from Ian: the "Twister" waxes that Jason is referring to is the new Nordic Grip waxes that enable the wax to "twist up" like a chapstick)

We've been impressed with the new kickers, and we continued to have excellent results using Toko gliders. In the four races, the CXC Team had three wins, three seconds and three thirds -- a great start to the season.

Jason Cork, CXC Team