This past weekend, Rob, Ziehl and I made our way back up north on our perpetual quest for soft turns and steep lines. Our first stop was Smuggs which might have been decent were it not for the bullet proof crust that had been whipped up by the wind and mixed precip… After throwing in the towel at the resort, sidecountry, and backcountry, we refueled and set our sights on Jay in hopes that it’s higher latitudes and prevailing weather patterns would… well, prevail. We rolled in around 10 AM, mustered as much enthusiasm as we could, geared up and hit the Bonaventure Quad. From the lift we got a good look at the scratchy conditions: exposed water bars, rocks, dirt… As we got up the mountain things got better – there was certainly plenty of decent skiing to be done at higher elevations but all of it would be firm: a good day for all-mountain skis.
As luck would have it, Rob had recently scored a pair of pre-production, locally engineered, boutique, dare-I-say-quiver-of-one all-mountain sticks: the Daily Bread by Worth Skis. If you live in New England and can only afford one pair of skis, this is probably the one to get. It features a modern geometry, with just enough early rise to keep your tips above the surface in variable conditions, just enough width to float in light pow, and a full sandwich construction and 21m radius so that you can rip GS turns all the way back to the lift. Oh, it’s light enough to tour on, too. Keep your eyes peeled for the full line of these New England specialists to go into full production some time in the upcoming years.
Check out Rob doing some beta-testing (you gotta zoom these in – click to enlarge):
Check out those angles…
Rob lays ’em over like a new pair of race stock GS 12s…
If you live in a place with perpetually very hard snow you should think about moving to a nicer climate, but not to Utah, please.” -Bruce Tremper, in Staying Alive
In spite of the rain in NE this past week, Rob, Sweeney and I were determined to find some decent skiing. We were at Smuggs on Saturday, where it was definitely a day to focus on the touring rather than the skiing. We bootpacked a mile or so in the area, where the rain crust made any potential runs look a little sketchy. I tested the diagonal carry of my REI Double Diamond pack, which I found works well for getting the skis on the pack quickly, but for excursions of any length I much prefer the A-frame carry. The diagonal straps allow the skis to hang a little too far off behind the pack.
In the afternoon we went on a brief skin, mostly to stretch our legs. It turns out having skins correctly cut for your skis makes a huge difference.
Sweeney ahead on the skin track
We passed a few deer and rabbit tracks on the ascent through some calm low angle woods. There wasn’t much snow so skiing down our skin track was pretty interesting.
We crossed lots of animal prints
Sunday, we decided to try Jay Peak, since Mt. Washington was reporting up to 80 mph winds. We skied the tracked trees all day and had a blast. Rob was on his new pair of Worth Daily Breads, which he let me try last weekend at Wildcat. Worth Skis is an up and coming ski manufacturer that designed a line of East Coast specific backcountry skis. I took Rob’s pair for a spin on some groomers where it gripped like a dream in variable snow. I felt comfortable making GS speed turns, and really enjoyed the rebound they delivered. I could swing around the 185s in the bumps as well. Rob got the stiffer version with the Power Core which I found was maybe a little too much ski for me when making tighter turns, but I bet I’d like the softer version.
Update: Brian put up a brief TR with photos of Rob laying it over on his Worth Skis.
Right now, I’ve got my nose buried in Avy safety books. Let’s hope the next few weeks hold some big storms for us.
I took today to do two mini-projects and ready myself for the rest of ski season that’s to come. The first was to cut my new climbing skins down to fit my Atomic 180 Helidaddys. The second was to waterproof and seal a pair of leather gloves I bought.
I did get some skiing in yesterday, however, up at Wildcat. They’d gotten 8″ inches Friday, so I headed up with my Dad before he went back overseas, and met up with Rob and an assortment of other skiers who came out of the woodwork.
Now, onto the projects:
Climbing Skin Trimming
Black diamond actually has a great how-to video on trimming, but I figured it might be useful do a brief write up since this is the first pair of skins I’ve trimmed. The video details almost everything I cover below. I bought the 125m Black Diamond Nylon STS skins. My basic reasoning for this was that I’ve been borrowing a used pair of Nylon STD skins with a clipfix tail clip from Sweeney, and it seemed like I just needed more coverage under my skis. The 125mm would totally cover my Atomics since their dimensions are 126-99-117. The STS skins also seemed to be the most utilitarian.
The basic process is, clip the skin to the tail, lay it onto the skin from tail to tip, and then start measuring. A quick note here, it seemed like it should be obvious how to attach the tail clip, but I had to pause and mess with it for a few minutes. I’d seen Rob use the clips, held a correctly attached one before, and had the diagrams on the skin instructions in front of me…but it wasn’t immediately clear. The images on the BD instructions don’t accurately display how to attach the metal clip to the strap. In lieu of this, here’s several photos.
STS tail clip attachment
Top view. You can secure the rubber strap to the metal clip.
You’ll notice that I have the clip in the 2nd position, rather than the 4th that Black Diamond recommends. Part of this is that I cut the skin a little long and had already attached the tip piece, but also I figure I want these skins to be able to potentially fit a ski with similar sidecut but with a length of 185.
After you lay out the skin, measure where the tip piece will meet the skin, mark it with a sharpie and ruler, and cut the skin. Then align the tip loop and screw it in. Use pliers to remove the screw that sticks through.
Removing excess screw from the tip piece attachment with a twist of the pliers
At this point, remove the skin and re-apply it from tip to tail. It should be under a bit of tension. BD recommends cutting excess skin at the tip, by marking angular lines from both sides of tip loop to where the skin would meet the snow, and removing the excess. Their included tool makes the cutting fairly easy.
Here’s where the “measure twice, cut once” part comes in. With the skin fairly centered on the ski, cut one side along the sidecut.
Removing the excess skin from the edges
Then remove the skin and re-align it so the side you just cut has 2mm of edge showing. This is so when you’re skinning you can still use your edges. Make the second cut.
Fully cut skin, with edges showing.
Ready for touring
Repeat for the second ski and that’s it! I’m hoping this will resolve the slipping problems I’ve had on steeps compared to skinning with properly cut skins.
Glove waterproofing
I’ve had a bit of trouble with gloves recently since it’s been so damn cold on the mountain. I just bought a super warm pair of mitts for cold days, but I want to make this all-leather pair my every day glove for the slopes. I wore these at Wildcat when it was ~25 degrees Fahrenheit without issue, but they got very damp on the outside by the end of the day.
The procedure was, heat the gloves in the oven on warm until they heat up. Then apply mink oil, and put them back in the oven to let them soak in. Take the gloves out after 5 minutes or so and let cool. Then apply Nikwax waterproofing.
Left glove, with no mink oil, vs. the right glove after oiling. I went back and oiled the few bits around the thumb and cuff that I'd missed.
Application products
The finished product
The mink oil darkened the leather and made it a bit softer. The Nikwax was spray on and seems to have soaked in without affecting the glove texture much.
Practically giddy from excitement during last Thursday’s storm, Rob, Sweeney, and I headed up to Jackson, NH where we crashed at Denaro’s. Rob and I had plans for a mini-ski vacation: 4 days up north. We were kindly greeted on Friday with ~10 inches of fresh at Wildcat.
Day 1: Wildcat / Attitash
We’d come prepared with coupons galore, ready to get the best deals wherever the snow was. Wildcat was empty when we showed up, and there was some serious graupel falling that switched back and forth to snow during the day. I’m going to have to agree with Sweeney’s TR here, in his words, it was debatable whether we were slaying gnar or pow, but we were finally slaying something.
We ran laps on a few trails we basically had to ourselves, skiing fresh lines every run. My Atomic Helidaddy’s did pretty well in the steeps, but wanted to sink a bit more on the flats which resulted in skiing the tails a bit.
Rob on his DPS 138s
Sweeney on his Drifters
Me getting into a turn
Rob kindly lent me his DPS 138’s to try–which were pretty much the best thing ever. They are basically shaped like two water skis, which makes them butter turns in pow, no matter how far forward you get. I’m sold that rocker and reverse/reverse camber is the way to go in Pow. We didn’t snap any more photos after the swap–we were too busy having fun ripping it up.
We headed over to check out Attitash for the afternoon, which was maybe not the best idea in retrospect since they got less snow and more sleet than Wildcat, but overall I can’t complain. By around 3 pm we’d pretty much skied everything worth skiing, so we packed up and headed to our next stop at Alex’s place in Lincoln to meet up with Alex, Denaro, Shane, and Hannah.
Day 2: Jay Peak
We rolled out of bed Saturday at the ungodly hour of 5:15, but as soon as we looked at Jay reporting 14-16″ of new snow overnight we knew it was going to be an epic day. We got to Jay just in time to stand outside in the 0 degree temps and high winds which was well worth it to get first chair. Some of the runs we took might have been the first tracks of the season.
Sweeney got some sick POV footage of the woods, see for yourself:
Eventually the winds beat us down and we headed in for the final time to warm up and recuperate. Sweeney had some nasty looking frostbite that sent him in around lunch, but seems to be making a quick recovery. My own previous frostbite injuries were acting up as well, unfortunately. We headed back to Lincoln where Rob and I schemed up plans for the rest of the weekend.
Day 3: Smuggs
While everyone else seemed to have had enough of the cold, Rob and I woke bleary eyed at 5:15 again to make the drive up to Smuggler’s Notch. Not really knowing the mountain, we met up with a group of Rob’s friends off the TGR forums, and headed over to the resort, which had gotten about as much snow as Jay. The wind was mercifully mostly still, but the summit temp was a frigid -20 which kept us from doing too many laps. We skied some trees with the TGR guys, and the ducked off a trail into what looked like a nice open line, but dead ended. We ended up having to backtrack, bootpacking a few hundred yards in dense woods where we’d unknowingly made the classic mistake of going right where we should have gone left. Oh well, it was a fun adventure.
At this point I tried to take a few photos, but my camera batteries were literally frozen, so I gave up and we skied a few more runs instead.
Day 4: Touring the Notch
We crashed near the Notch Sunday night and awoke to temps nearing -20 in town. This was not very pleasant follow-up to the previous days of freezing our extremities, but I think we made the best of it. Rob’s friend directly us to an undisclosed location, where we headed to do a mini tour around 11 when it was finally warming up. After getting a few turns in, we hiked and then skied out to meet up with another group for an afternoon exploratory tour. My camera was still complaining of the cold, and in the interest of not giving away any local secrets, again, no photos.
We parked below the ridge we were planning to ski, quickly threw our skins on and got moving. Soon I was wearing just a baselayer. I presume it must have warmed up a bit, but it was the first time I can say I was warm while outside during the weekend. We skinned for about two hours until we found some decent looking steeps and transitioned to hit some untracked lines on mostly low angle woods. After a bit of traversing we found a logging road where we got up some speed and got to throw the skis around a bit.
Finally, my first non-resort touring! The skiing was well worth the effort. My new pack seemed to fit the bill, but my borrowed skins were still struggling even on the natural snow. There was just too much glide due to the skins being ~80mm underfoot on my 99mm waist skis. Not a good combo. These seem like they’ll do the trick though:
It was a shame to leave even after freezing our toes off all weekend. This was certainly a memorable weekend.
Edit: In case you didn’t believe the temperatures I was citing, here’s a pic of the thermostat in Rob’s car:
-8.5...the ambient temp outside while at Smuggs on Sunday
