Another waxing question (choosing waxes)

[lowangle al]

I've never had snow stick to my polar. I did recently had a problem with glide, when I really shouldn't have. It was cold dry snow and I had just applied polar to the bases of my fish scale vectors and they didn't glide. Luckily I was skiing from home so I grabbed my wife's skis that were prepped the same way and had been skied on a few times, and there was no problem.

So, I think the wax was contaminated with something. They were the white military skis with white bases that were very dirty. I was unable to scrape it off so I used the only thing I had besides gasoline, paint thinner. It seemed to work, as the dirt came right off, but I never saw any gooey wax on my rag, which surprised me. The bases looked clean and I let them dry before waxing them. I applied it the same way I have been doing for years so was surprised that they didn't glide. This had happened once before when I used F4 on my scales. I had used it before with no problem. So now I'm thinking that there was some polar left in the scales and it didn't react well with the F4.

Is it possible that some warmer kick wax or something else was on the ski when you applied the polar, because it doesn't sound like the polar should have done that, especially in warmer temps.

Also, anyone with some insight into what my problem was would be appreciated.

[JohnSKepler]

Instead of creating another thread, I'll post on here.
On my Rabbs I ironed in a couple layers of polar and corked in another couple layers as a base to put warmer waxes on top of it. The idea being I could use the polar for really cold mornings and put warmer waxes on top as needed.

I was out a few days ago. It was in the mid-20s, mid-day with mixed cloud cover. Way too warm for polar. I didn't bother putting on warmer kick wax. I was just using full length skins. My assumption was that cold wax in warm snow would glide fine and not stick but it wouldn't grip at all. After pulling skins at the top of the hill I had no grip but at the bottom of the hill I noticed a bunch of snow sticking to the kick wax while the rest of my ski was clean. That explains why my downhill skiing experience was not great. What the heck is going on?

I should note that I have very little experience with kick wax and most of it has been failed experiments.

The only time my polar stuck was when it was significantly colder than the polar range. Can't remember the temperature. Sub-zero F. Only time I've been out when it was that cold.

[timpete]

To the original poster I would say that temp fresh “snowball snow” is tough to wax for without sticking. The correct solution is to try a colder hard wax and as others have said make sure you’ve corked out any globs
- but you may find you slip with the colder wax.

Again, it’s a tough range. Helpful things (that you probably already know) are to focus on stride and gliding rather than stomping, double pole for propulsion, and master the “kick off clumps” technique at the top of the hills while in motion.

[socaltim]

I wonder if the skins left some residue?

[Musk Ox]

I wonder if the skins left some residue?

This is maybe the best bid so far... and maybe some melted snow underneath recrystallizing?

I remember putting climbing skins on top of the skins on my Mountain Race Skins in cold weather and they really damaged both mohair and glue, a propos of maybe nothing.

[tkarhu]

The snow thermometer measured 30 degrees so I went with the Swix Special Violet. It gave me great grip even as the temperature fell in spots that had received shade, or went up in spots that were exposed. It was cloudy, as I said, but we'd had a lot of sun and warm weather. I could detect quite small changes in snow temperature as the grip changed, sometimes piling up snow and at others forcing better (and more complete) weight transfer. In either case the wax worked well requiring alternately a little scrubbing or a little better transfer. There were a few times that it dragged on a slight descent but I could always scrub the snow off with a bit more pressure on that ski - usually the left one.

My question is, should I have gone with the Blue Extra? Piling up is usually a sign that the wax is a little warm for the snow and it prevented the kick and glide I prefer but it was all gentle uphill so not as big a problem. I thought about changing but the Special Violet was getting the job done pretty well, and caused no issues on the gentle descent. What's the protocol at the initial waxing, go a little warmer than the thermometer or a little cooler?

You can avoid sticking snow by adding a thin layer of harder wax as top layer. Today we had similar temperatures and new snow. I coated with V30 blue, and had violet below it, for XC. No snow got stuck.

[corlay]

some Members here have been touting Rex Universal Kick Wax, as a solution when mid-tour snow starts sticking for whatever reason.

whats interesting, it its a pine tar formulation, and not a typical parrafin wax. but it goes over a typical hard kick wax, no problem, they say.

I picked some up, and plan to try it, next time this sulituation arises.