If you are cross-country skiing, you’ve probably experienced snow sticking to your skis and making your trip miserable. As always, prevention is better than cure, so we need to understand why is it happening.
Why Is Snow Sticking To Your Cross-Country Skis?
Whether you are a classic cross-country skier or an advanced skate skier, keeping your xc skis in top-notch condition is your priority. Unfortunately, under certain conditions, this can happen to anyone.
Skiing creates friction, which causes ice to turn into water. If you’ve studied high school chemistry, you probably know that water molecules form a strong bond with themselves. Therefore, when ice melts to form water, it causes the skis to stick to the snow.
It becomes crucial to ask, how do contemporary cross-country skis slide? It is because the temperature at which water usually freezes changes with pressure. As the pressure starts to increase, the temperature becomes lower.
When you press your ski on snow, the ice underneath melts. This, in turn, creates a thin water layer between the snow and ski, allowing it to slide. However, if your ski base is not waxed properly, it won’t slide.
Instead, it sticks to wet snow.
This brings up another question: how does wet snow work?
When there is plenty of water under the ski, it doesn’t leave any room for air to get under, thus, creating a strong vacuum underneath your ski board and snow. Therefore, when you try to move the ski, it gets sucked down, effectively stopping it from going anywhere.
Moreover, the fresher the snow, the more it sticks to your skis, causing them to slide and your skiing to become more challenging. Whether your skis are old or new, you need to glide wax them to make it glide on snow. Otherwise, it is bound to get stuck. Glide waxing is the best for maintaining your gear and ensuring speed and glide.
As for the so called waxless skis, even waxless skis require glide waxing to work correctly and smoothly on snow.
How To Prevent Snow Sticking To Your Skis
Glide waxing your ski base is the only solution to prevent snow from sticking to it. It allows you to enjoy a smoother and speedier skiing along with improved gear since your ski base won’t get stuck in ice – be it waxable or waxless skis. Note: Do not mix glide wax with kick or grip wax as they serve the completely opposite purpose.
Also, waxing is necessary to let your ski base glide on snow, which is why it is a must-buy for newbies making an entry into cross-country skiing adventures.
Check out our cross-country ski waxing guide for detailed instructions.
