Goldstream Sports Fairbanks Alaska

Wax Recommendation

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Now, those of you saying “I know how to wax, I just wish it was more fun,” or “I wish waxing was easier, and I wish there was a way to enjoy it more,” we have a solution for you!  For the ladies we have a Wine and Cheese Waxing Clinic set for Friday November 12th at 7pm here at Goldstream Sports. If you are a guy and feel this is sexist, please feel free to dress like a woman, including make-up and such, and we will let you join us.

At the clinic we will watch the professionals demonstrate the easiest, and best techniques for waxing skis.  We will also learn which waxes to use when and for what conditions.  My big question is when do I use cold powder?

Please sign up for the wax clinic by calling 455 6520.  Space is limited, and we need to get enough wine and cheese for everyone!  Register by November 11th to secure your place!

It is time to dust off those skis and get them ready to play. So, I will give you a few useful hints for ski preparation.

If you were on top of it last season and are always planning ahead, you would have stored your skis with a protective layer of a warm wax. For those who did this, all you need to do is scrape that wax off and apply a cooler layer for the conditions on top.  Good job! You are ready to ski!

Now, for those of you, like me, who did not diligently wax their skis before you put them away – we have some work to do!

The reason why we suggest that you put a layer of a warm wax on your skis for storage is to protect the bases from air.  The air oxidizes the bases, drying them out and leaving them pretty unhappy.  They will also absorb much less wax.  So, the first thing you will need to do is see how dry your bases are.

Take a copper brush, and start at the front of the ski and brush in short strokes to the rear of the ski.  Take a look at what comes off the ski, and also what the bases look like.  If there is a lot of white dust coming off the ski but the bases are black, keep brushing till there is no more dust.  This could just be some left over wax.

Now, if you brush and you get white dust, but are greyish then you have some oxidization happening. The grey color of the base is the oxidized P-Tex, and your skis may need to stone ground. Sometimes the grey will brush away, but often times it will not.

Hot wiping

If you have brushed your bases and they are black, you may want to perform a deep clean of the bases.  To do this take a warm wax, like Toko yellow or Swix CH10, melt and iron on the wax like normal.  But, quickly and before the wax sets, take a piece of cloth or Fiberlene or Base Tex and wipe that wax off quickly.  This takes a little skill, but what it does is take all of the dirt, dog poo and other nasties out of the pores.

Glide Waxing

Now that we have clean bases we are ready to wax.  Remember that when we apply a glide wax, we are heating the wax up to melt onto base.  We don’t want to burn the wax or scorch the ski bases, so have the iron hot enough just to melt the wax, but not so cool that it takes an hour to melt it.  Don’t let the iron smoke – no, not cigarettes silly.  You don’t want the iron to smoke as it means that wax is burning, and is WAY too hot for your bases..  If you put a really hot iron, or really hot wax on your skis you will sear the bases. For anyone who has ever seared a base, you will know that gut wrenching feeling of watching $300-$500 go down the drain.  Ironically, it is the people who are overcautious who tend to do the most damage.  Once a base is seared, there is very little we can do to remedy the situation.

Always do anything to your skis from tip to tail. Start with the base wax.  For this you can use a warmer wax like a Toko yellow, or a CH10, or if you want to get a little fancier and keep your bases cleaner – use a molybdenum base wax which will repel dirt.

Drip the wax on the ski moving down the ski as you go.  Place the hot iron on the wax on the ski and move the iron down the ski.  Take about 10 seconds to move down the ski on each pass.  Do around 2 – 3 passes and then let the ski cool down.  Cooling down takes around 45 minutes.  Don’t rush this.  If you scrape the ski when the bases are hot, you have a pretty good chance of slipping and slicing through the base.  Another expensive mistake.  One good way to avoid this is to have a few sets of skis to wax.  By the time you have waxed the 3rd set, the first set is ready to scrape!

When you have scraped the base layer off, brush it out with a copper brush, and then apply your top wax.  Determine the snow temperature of where you plan to ski (hint:  Check out the Goldstream Sports Wax Recommendations website).  Let the surface wax cool and scrape.  Once the surface wax is scraped, brush it out really well using a copper brush.  Once all the extra wax is removed, used a horse hair or soft nylon brush to polish the base.  Now you are ready to hit the trails!

The NSC Fairbanks will open the Alaska ski season with the first Tour de Ski format event in Alaska, the three-day Goldstream Sports Tour de Ski/Fairbanks.  The event will be held Friday-Saturday-Sunday, November 19-20-21, at Birch Hill.  The NSCF has always been at the forefront of the evolution of racing formats, and  was among the first in the country to organize and conduct sprints and skiathlons on a regular basis.  Hosting the first Tour de Ski format event in Alaska continues that tradition.

All three days of racing will be USSA National Ranking List events, with opportunities for Alaska skiers to earn USSA points that will help them improve their seeding at USSA Senior National Championships in Rumford, at USSA Junior Olympics in Minneapolis, and at the Besh Cup series of races in Alaska.

The Tour de SKi/Fairbanks format copies the general structure of a multi-stage cycling race, with the overall champion decided based upon the total combined time for the stages of the event, and including time bonuses awarded for high finishes and also for mid-race premes.

The Goldstream Sports Tour de Ski/Fairbanks will begin with a Friday evening prologue under the lights at Birch Hill.  Women will go 2.75Km and men will go 3Km, starting at 15-second intervals, in free technique.  The course will be similar to the one used at the 2009 USSA Team Sprint National Championships, although the course has been improved this summer to eliminate sidehills, and a little bit of vertical has been added at the high point on the course. 

Time bonuses of 30, 20 and 10 seconds will be awarded to the first three skiers in the overall rankings for men and women, and there will also be time bonuses within some classes.  Time bonuses are awarded because in such a short race, it is very difficult for skiers to create big time gaps, so the bonuses reward the placings.

Saturday’s race will be the first race in the 15th Annual Flint Hills Town Race Series, the Fairbanks Youth Sports Season Opener, a mass-start, free technique race of 8Km for men and 6Km for women.  This race in recent years has drawn upwards of 400 entries in all age classes, including all the Region VI schools and many Mat-Su area schools, as well as several top juniors and seniors from Anchorage..

Start positions for Saturday’s race will be based upon how skiers finished in Friday night’s event, with the highest-ranking skiers from Friday’s race getting the best start positions.  There may be some mid-race time bonuses awarded at hill tops and/or sprint lines, and there will also be time bonuses awarded at the finish.  Similar to short races such as Friday night’s event, it can be difficult to get a lot of separation in mass-start races, so the bonuses will reward the winners and top finishers, even if the finish is very close.

Sunday’s concluding and decisive race will be a 5Km and 10Km classic event on the 5Km “Three Hills” course, using the pursuit format for starting.  Start positions and start intervals for this race will be based upon the race rankings after two days of competition.  The leader in the competition will start first.  The second ranked skier will start second, etc.  If the second-ranked skier is 21 seconds behind in the rankings, he or she will start 21 seconds behind the first-ranked skier, etc.  The first skier across the line is the winner of the Tour de Ski.

It might sound a little complicated, but it’s really not.  If you have ever followed the Tour de France, even casually, you should have no problem figuring out what’s going on in the Goldstream Sports Tour de Ski/Fairbanks.  For the skiers, it makes for a very interesting competition, because there is a lot going on and there are lots of different ways to excel in the event.  Goldstream Sports will provide the prizes.

This event will also serve as the Alaska Nordic Cup, the annual competition between the Alaska Nanook Ski Team and the UAA Seawolves.  For the UAA v. UAF competition, only the “raw” times will be used — no bonuses will be counted in the Alaska Nordic Cup.

It should be an exciting weekend, and a great way to start off the season for any Alaska ski racer, be they a local talent, a club skier, or a national-level competitor.  For more information on the Tour de Ski, contact Chief of Competition John Estle, at sportalaska@gci.net.

TRAIL MAPPING PROGRAM RELEASED FOR PUBLIC USE
A Fairbanks-area trail user recently released a beta version of a program he is working on
called TrailMapper.
This is a web-based trail-mapping program that uses Google Earth and allows
users to add trails. Currently, most of the trails in the program are from interior Alaska,
but the program is set up for use by trail users statewide. As more users contribute trail
data this will become a very useful tool. Alaska Trails, a statewide non-profit trail group,
is helping facilitate development of the program.
To access the program go to: http://www.trailmapper.org
Click the link “Help” for a short tutorial. You’ll be prompted to download the
Google Earth plugin. It’s about 5 megabytes.
Because TrailMapper is in its beta version, it’s critical to give feedback to its
developer, Tom Clark (aksnowbiker@gmail.com). This is a volunteer effort and Tom is
busy with other projects for the summer, so further development and bug fixing is likely
to be delayed.

Many trails are already on the system including the Ester Dome Single Track and the Goldstream Sports Classic Ski Trail.

Apply LF Moly as a base to repel dirt and improve break a way speed, scrape and brush, then apply HF Blue/HF Red mixed 1:1, scrape and brush.  Finish by rotocorking JetStream Blue/JetStream Red brush with a dedicated nylon polishing brush and polish with a thermopad. The Jetstream will improve glide and durability while repelling dirt.

Pace yourself to finish strong. Last year I bonked and the hills from the coastal trail up to the finish were brutal. Take plenty of fuel and fluid early in the race. Waiting to long will catch up with you.  Have fun and finish strong.

Kick not a problem at minus 16. The trick was getting good glide. I was running Toko HF blue on a cold stone grind (The Dunner). The high flouro wax was gliding fast with humidity up for minus 16  conditions. The HF was also repels dirt that can drastically slow skis by the end of the race if it sticks to them.  Because there was not any new sharp snow crystals I skipped the cold power. The snow was actually quite fast for the temperature.

I choose to ski on a klister ski. This may seem odd but the tall camber wax pocket alowed me to keep the kick wax off the snow alowing the ski to glide freely. I waxed the short pocket I would use if I was using klister. Getting grip on a klister skis at this temperature is not hard so the taller camber was not a problem. I waxed with Toko Green Binder ironed in Two layers of mint and some Green Toko Binder under the toe for bomb proof kick. I could walk up anything and rocket down the hills. The best of both worlds. Now if I could just figure out how to be healthy for races.   Joel

Heats start at 12:30.  Top 30 from qualifier advance to heats of 6, 3 will advance from each heat. The link below has link in upper left that take you to the results as they happen. Jr not in top thirty advance to Jr heats.

For full qualifier results below.

http://summittiming.com/live_results/data/live_results_for_men.html

Congratulations on great races in the 30km Classic.

The new Goldstream Sports Classic Ski Trail is in great shape. I set track yesterday and skied it this morning. The 4k we added this year is a blast. It is narrow with a mix of straight and winding sections. Most has moderate grades but there are a few steep hills.

The section we built last year is 4.5 k of  trail similar to the new section but without the steep hills.

The trail head is in front of the store and heads out on a mix of privet and DNR land.  It is four feet wide  with a set track totaling 8.5 k. Ski it both directions for a total of 17 k.

I hope to get some trail maps up at the trail head and intersection in the morning. Come and enjoy. Joel