Asnes Mountain Race 48

[anrothar]

Skier: 6'3", 220 dressed, Mostly non-competitive, distance focused nordic backcountry experience.

Setup:MR 48 in 210, bought from SportAlbert, so in theory they chose appropriate ones for my weight, since they ask on the form. AT toepiece and chopped boot setup.

Conditions: I've skied these on bomber, abrasive crust, singletrack and snowmobile trails from -5F to about 28F. Broken trail from 3" up to about 15".

Initial impressions: Very light in hand. Tips flex smoothly and without much effort. Second camber is strong.

Performance: Real double camber, although it's lost some of it's strength after about 150 miles. Holds wax well, even at my weight. They move very quickly and turn surprisingly well, thanks to the easy flexing tip. They do fine breaking trail in powder, though 15" was probably pushing their limits. I imagine the tips would make them useless in breakable crust. They skate ski wonderfully on crust and wide enough trails. I definitely notice their lower weight compared to the Pellestova while skating.

I'll have a thorough review of their performance for snowmobile trails next week. I'm participating in the Susitna 100(miles) this weekend on them. I've done the race on fat bike several times before, it's a blast. I'll be going at a casual pace, as I've never skied that far in one go before. I'm hoping for a finish time under 25 hours, but would be fine with around 30 hours, considering my level of training this year. There's on and off snow expected on the course through Friday and temps should be between 12F and 28F, pretty much perfect for ski touring.

[anemic]

Keep us posted! When is the start? Start easy!


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[lilcliffy]

Awesome ski. Thanks for taking the time to report on it for us. Sounds like the perfect kit for your long-distance pursuits in the backcountry. Going to read your report on the Gamme 54 for comparison!

[anrothar]

Keep us posted! When is the start? Start easy!


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Race starts tomorrow(Saturday) morning at 9am Alaska time. Ill definitely be letting the fat bikers and skate skiers, and even some of the faster runners take off ahead of me. The only way I'm going to finish this thing is to pace myself and take it slow. If I can't breathe comfortably through my nose, I'm going to fast.

[anrothar]

Awesome ski. Thanks for taking the time to report on it for us. Sounds like the perfect kit for your long-distance pursuits in the backcountry. Going to read your report on the Gamme 54 for comparison!

I'm excited to get more time on both this and the Gamme. The 12 mm of sidecut and soft flexing tips on the MR 48 make it much more playful that you would expect for such a narrow ski.

[anrothar]

Keep us posted! When is the start? Start easy!


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Race:

That didn't go quite like I hoped it would. I can show up on a bike to a hundred miler with minimal to no training and fake it enough to finish in a reasonable time. Turns out that's a lot harder to do on skis. I knew skiing would be harder than riding, I just underestimated how much harder it would be in less than favorable conditions. 3-6" of fresh snow fell the night before, a little more fell in the first hour or two of the race, with temps around freezing. Stronger, more capable skiers were able to skate and double pole through it, I was sticking to my kick and glide and shuffle if necessary plan. Kick wax was both slipping and icing up, at the same time. At least I wasn't suffering with fishscales in the overflow(severe icing, there were several skiers with fishscales and they all had to stop and spend 5+ minutes scraping ice off their skis after each section of overflow). In between the few bits of overflow, the trail was a semi-firm, wiggly trench made by the bikes for one ski, and unsupportive mashed potatoes on either side of it. The ski in the mashed potatoes was constantly squirming side to side. By the time I got to Little Susitna Landing(2 or 3 miles from the first checkpoint, where my gf was conveniently volunteering), I knew my day was done. It was taking far more effort than I knew I could muster for another 80 miles. The first 22 miles took me 5 hours. By the time I arrived at the checkpoint, my hip flexors were in pain and my left tricep was cramping. I had fun, and will return to ski a hundred in the future, with significantly more training.

The winner of the ski division took almost 19 hours. Last year the ski division winner finished in 11 hours.

The ski:

The MR 48 was possible an ideal ski for this year in this race. The width gave me a bit more float on the mashed potatoes and overflow than those on racing skis, and was lighter than Glittertinds, which two racers were on. Some of the overflow I was able to double pole across the thin crusty layer on top where I could see lighter racers on skinny skis were punching through into the watery slush. I took an off trail detour on an old, buried snow mobile track around the overflow, and the skis did great through about 10 inches of fresh snow. My kick wax was not noticeably degraded after 22 miles, but I was slipping a lot, so that's to be expected. I though about putting the Madshus Intelligrip skins on several times, but the glide was sooo good on that wet snow. I had enough grip to k&g on the flats with only the occasional slip. Uphills I would have to intentionally ice up the wax a little so that I could walk up them, then a few firm kicks at the top would break the lump of snow and ice free. The downhills were a blast.

I think this really is about a perfect, all conditions snowmobile trail ski.

-turns great on the steeper downhills
-the 3/4" edges are enough to save you on any unexpected ice
-they skate well when the trail is wider
-the tips flex enough to not get too thrown off by carbide ruts from the snowmobiles
-the flexy tips also increase control and grip through whoopdidoos/moguls
-they have enough float for punchy single snowmobile tracks
-they have a good, stiff wax pocket for wax retention and efficient kick

[MikeK]

Sounds like the perfect ski for the job. I can't imagine skiing 100 miles non-stop.

[Cannatonic]

wow, great report, 100 miles ski race, that's crazy. 22 is impressive, the most I've ever skied is 18 miles. So the temps were near freezing? Which grip wax were you using, red? did you consider using the mohair skins?

The ski review is pushing me even more to a set of MR 51's....I'm liquidating a bunch of stuff out of the vault to try to "make room"

[anrothar]

wow, great report, 100 miles ski race, that's crazy. 22 is impressive, the most I've ever skied is 18 miles. So the temps were near freezing? Which grip wax were you using, red? did you consider using the mohair skins?

The ski review is pushing me even more to a set of MR 51's....I'm liquidating a bunch of stuff out of the vault to try to "make room"

If I knew the Mountain Tour 51's were coming out a few months later, I would have gotten those instead. The sidecut on the 48 is nice but unnecessary.

Temp was 28F overnight as 3-6" fell, 30F at the start, rising to 36F by 1 PM as an additional 1-2@ of snow fell. My grip wax was Swix base binder, 3 layers of Toko Blue, 3 layers of Toko Red. I had Toko blue, red and yellow hard wax and red and yellow grip spray(klister-like). But, if red was icing up, going warmer or klister would have made that worse. It was the temperature and snow conditions that the pros race on zero skis or the newer skin skis. I debated putting the Madshus skins on quite a bit. I didn't because of the several unavoidable sections of overflow, the fact that grip was about acceptable on the flats and the amount of glide I was getting. If I kept the skis in constant motion, the wax didn't ice up, but stopping for a minute meant stomping and dragging for the first 10+ strides to kick the wax free.

[Cannatonic]

those are waxing conditions from hell! Even when Red wax is working well it doesn't glide very fast for me. Swix red wax is slow and snow sticks to it also. I tried a couple types of Rex wax that included pine tar this year, their Red wax seems better, I had it out in 31-35 degree temps and snow never freezes to it, it worked better than Swix for me. But it's still sluggish compared to colder temp waxes.

I'm curious to see if there's any skin from Asnes that could do better in warm temps. I'd love to avoid the noise from fishscales skis also. I wonder if the skin rips off the base if you ski it through downhill sections. btw I think the MR48 would be a great ski, it's super light for an edge ski and has nice sidecut. I have to avoid skis below 50mm waist width because I like a little more stability for my EEEE-width feet.

also just curious, did you put blue wax under the red on purpose? Why not just apply the red directly onto the binder wax?