Asnes Mohair Short Skin 35mm SkinLock Review

[anrothar]

I put them on toward the end of the ski for a @400 meter long climb that was too steep for the wax with a trail too narrow to comfortably herringbone with 210's. When I got to the top I left them on just to see if waxing and trimming helped the glide. It did a little. There was some glide, but not much. I think for my weight(100 kilos dressed), achieving a tall wax pocket would require me to buy the skis in person or the shop to use a mechanical flex tester. There's definitely a wax pocket on the MR 48's for me, but it's low, so even trimmed, the back half of the kicker skin is sliding on the snow and I get great traction on the climb. With the nylon skin trimmed, it got better traction than my S Bound 98 on similar slopes at similar temps.

I use Toko waxes, and blue was working great for me yesterday at those temps. My skis were a little slow, but I hadn't bothered rewaxing for glide and was running Toko red glide wax.

[anrothar]

I guess that contradicts what I said earlier on several points. I suppose having more time to think about it has made the cause of the problems more clear.

[Cannatonic]

I ordered 35mm skin-locks from SportAlbert in Germany. The shipping is almost as much as the skins. But- they are about the same price- including shipping- of a similar product from a Canadian dealer...

I was originally suggesting a group order- but at least to Canada they want to charge the shipping fee PER item- so there was no savings.

OK, good to know. Hopefully next year another US dealer will emerge.

I'd rather use my fishscale skis for wet snow that start cutting up Asnes skins. But if you were on a long trip and had to slog through warm snow for parts of it, or ice, a small skin would be great to have in the pack.

[Cannatonic]

Had the Gamme 54 out on some nasty 32-degree graupel/ice surface. Perfect day to try the 35mm nylon skins, scales would not have done much. At full length they worked like climbing skins. Since I have 45mm my intent with these is for kick & glide, so I started cutting 2 inches off at a clip.

The Asnes advice seems spot-on, when I snipped my way to just in front of the heel pad it started to feel like a waxed or fishcale ski. It was actually a cool experment, as the skin shortened I could feel which parts of the tails bear my weight while gliding. They glided pretty well with the Black Diamond nikwax treatment.

The metal clip system seems to work well, didn't notice it catching at all. These skis are highly cambered, 210's and my weight is only about 175 right now, so maybe that helped. So far I like the system - it looks like you only need to cut 2 tiny slits in the skin material to attach it to the clip, so when these wear out I can make my own.

[lilcliffy]

Excellent report Cannatonic- thank you!

Your observations match mine.

[Cannatonic]

this would be perfect for replacement, you use the 60mm or split the 80mm into 2 halves:

COLLTEX PDG RACE ROLL

http://skimo.co/colltex-race-skins