Preliminary Birkie Wax Tip - Toko

Mon, Feb  20, 2012 - By Ian Harvey

John Bauer went out and tested glide wax this morning. Temperature was fairly warm when he tested (20F) which is on the warm side to what we anticipate, so it was a good test. HF Blue outran HF Red and JS Blue outran JS Red. The Birkie trail has lots of ice on it with some slow powder as well and some dirt on road crossings and areas that have been shoveled. Obviously HF Blue is super dirt resistant due to its hardness, fluorine, and lack of greasiness (no oil). The forecast is for 1-5 inches of snow to fall the next two days followed by snow showers up to race day with no significant accumulation. Temperatures are supposed to be warmer through Thursday with overnight lows around 20F and highs in around freezing. Friday night it is supposed to cool down some and hit a low of 12F with a high of just 25 of Saturday. If that forecast holds up, our wax tip should be excellent. If it is warmer than that (if the warmer weather stalls out), then we could be looking at HF Moly followed by JS Red being the race wax.  So, our preliminary glide wax tip for the Birkie is:
 
LF Moly, HF Blue, JS Blue with Blue structure. This would be for the entire field. With a forecasted high of 25 and enough dirt out there, this should be good for everyone.  It will be important to keep the skis clean and to have durable wax due to the ice and dirt out there - Blue for all.
 
Should temperatures warm up and hit only an overnight low of around 18F+, we would go with LF Moly, HF Moly, JS Red with Red Structure (for everybody).
 
For grip, because conditions are currently ice with some powder here and there on top and forecasted incoming snow from 1-5 inches, we need to wait and see what happens. We can't make a call now obviously as we have no idea if we are looking at klister or hard wax even. We will make the call as soon as we think we have a predictable situation (perhaps starting Wednesday evening).
 
We will have all local shops staffed with people who will be informed about our grip wax tip and the website will be updated as soon as we make the call, so I don't see this as a problem.
 
As with all Toko wax tips, should a person not want to use HF products for example, he or she could substitute LF or System 3 as their temperature ranges are similar.  For this reason, we don't do multiple wax tips showing the different "levels" of performance.