Fake it until you break it

 My opportunities to ski classical on performance equipment have been very limited for a couple of years. Last season I got out a few times on our snowmaking loop. At least once ( I think it was more) I was testing various klister combinations to see if I could get that perfect catch-and-release of fast classical skiing. I never did.

On the sales floor, I will often describe and demonstrate some of the differences between a comfortable touring shuffle and a precise technical stride as I lay out the options for a customer trying to pick out their next ski set. But sliding on snow cannot be simulated on dry land. One move flows into the next. You can freeze a frame at a time, but the action on snow must proceed without breaks between one phase and the next.

Walking or running might seem to flow in the same way, but you can usually stop and start again at any time. Skate skiing is easier to interrupt and resume, because each ski does not have to stop for a precise instant. If you stop at some random point and just glide, you can resume skating just by angling your skis properly and digging in. But in performance classical you need to be right on top of the kick zone of one ski at a time, and punch it down at the precise instant that it passes under you. At the same instant, your other ski is sliding through and out in front of you. Your weight has to go completely from the stopped ski to the sliding ski in that moment.

A properly fitted performance classic ski will have a camber stiff enough to allow you to glide with all of your weight on one ski, only sticking the kick zone when you unload the muscles on that side of your body, from just above the hip all the way down through the foot. It's something that you never do while walking or running. It is completely unique to performance classical skiing.

Touring on a nice soft ski demands none of this. You can drive the hip to get a little more oomph out of your stride, but you don't have to. You probably don't even want to, because it takes way more effort to drive a soft ski faster than it was meant to go.

Each style of skiing has its place. I was doing a lot of classical skiing on my exploring skis, using their secure climbing and easy turning to poke around in the woods with no particular need for a trail as such. With deep enough snow, I can take the same setup to trails and glades on the other end of the home mountain range, to link a few more turns. It's still not full-on single-camber turn hunting. None of that helps a lot when I finally get onto a well set track and try to use sportier skis.

As this season developed, conditions allowed for a little more reasonable kick waxing. But I had to reassemble all the broken pieces of the stride. You have to become aware of them individually before you can forget about them again.

To complicate matters, advancing through my late 60s, I have to deal with the losses of age. Genetics and regular conditioning can only do so much. You will lose strength, and some coordination. Joints aren't as smooth as they used to be. Adjust accordingly. My average coffee consumption is probably a little higher than optimal, but even without that an older athlete needs to pay attention to the hardworking heart. I wax a little longer.

While I was wobbling around like a puppet I also thought about how ski machines like the Nordic Trak were bad for technique. They worked the same large muscles through the same general motions, but completely lacked the nuance of kick timing, or an accurate simulation of the way you apply force through the poles. And resistance was increased through the skis themselves, and the rope system to which the hand grips were attached. This is not how skiing in the real world gets harder or easier. On snow, the resistance to the skis changes very little, usually based on hardness or softness of the snow. Exertion goes up or down as the skier moves body mass up or down, climbing, cruising on the level, or descending. You'd do as well running stairs to train for climbing on skis.

The storm pattern has favored getting and keeping snow for the past two or three storms. February and March usually bring whatever larger storms we get around here. Nothing is usual in the climate as it changes, but when the Arctic airmass shifts our way we can still get some of the weather that we used to take for granted. Cover may improve on the whole groomed system for a while.

Ski Machines

Two or three people within a week or two have mentioned on the sales floor that they are unfamiliar with skiing, but have used the Nordic Track indoor exercise machine. More than 30 years ago, American Olympic skier Bill Koch endorsed it as a great trainer for the preseason. The company itself no longer makes them at all. They make treadmills, ellipticals, exercise bikes, and rowers, but no cross-country ski simulator.

I still have one, folded up in the crawl space. Dutifully, I put in many hours on it to prepare each year for the coming of real ski conditions outdoors. Mind you, I never put in even an entire hour in one session, because the Nordic Track is without question the most tedious exercise simulator ever devised. I used to say that it was all of the work and none of the reward, which is true. Worse than that, though, the way it uses the muscles and shifts the effort from one side to the other is so different from actual skiing that the muscle memory will probably actually inhibit a beginning skier's progress if they really want to learn to stride on a medium to high performance ski.

One customer sounded like he was trying to teach himself, sliding around on his new skis, trying to make it feel like the Nordic Track. Note: if your skiing feels like the Nordic Track, you're doing it wrong. The machine is confined and constrained. Real skis in the real world are free, and sometimes unruly.

Cross-country skiing didn't start out as exercise, it started out as a way to get from place to place. Exercise was incidental. Skiers would put forth as much effort as necessary. If you're chasing game, or being chased by someone you pissed off, maybe you'd get the ol' heart rate up there in the red zone, but as a practical matter, skiers use terrain to their advantage as much as possible. What goes up gets to come down. On snowshoes, you'd be plodding either way. On skis you get to glide.

On the Nordic Track you do not get to glide. That crucial difference is the subtle impediment to actual skiing based on what your body memorized in your dutiful plod on the machine. You can set the resistance so that the flywheel spins, but then you aren't working as hard, burning calories and breaking down muscle so that it will rebuild itself stronger. If you design a program or even make the minor effort to mix things up, you might vary the resistance from one session to the next, or within the course of a single session. Even so, the glide phase of a low resistance session isn't anything like a real glide phase when you have to balance on a sliding ski.

A fully developed classical stride has distinct segments that occur in seamless succession. Dig around in the archives for more detail on getting the most out of your classical technique. 

Puppy stabbing

One of the instructors at Jackson Ski Touring used metaphors masterfully to convey the basics of classical technique. He would talk about kicking a ball down the track or sliding in socks on a hardwood floor to describe kicking and gliding in a way that would actually make the student's muscles start to engage in the way they should, rather than using abstract theory and anatomical terminology.

He instructed students when poling to think of pulling a little puppy forward with a leash rather than stabbing forcefully downward at the snow with the vicious metal spikes on the ends of their poles. "Pull the puppy, don't stab the puppy," he would say. Emphasizing the hand coming forward rather than the pole jabbing down helps create a fluid stride that relies on timing rather than force.

The snow hasn't been so good this winter, so I haven't put any time in on the trails. Yesterday I got out for my first quasi-groomed skiing on the Super Loop section of Sewall Woods. Three inches of fresh on top of the pocked and trampled remnants on which the die-hards had been subsisting allowed for a semi-refined slither over the irregular surface.

I noticed right away that I was doing a lot of puppy stabbing. Because the snow did not provide consistent support I was only able to connect two or three fluid strides before some jolt would break the rhythm. I would spear the snow abruptly as I put the the kickstand down on one side and the other. It occurred to me that puppy stabbing is the norm in bushwhacking and trudging along hiking trails and logging roads. Wherever conditions don't favor the beauty stride the rhythmic plant, plant, plant of puppy stabbing suits the abbreviated glide and lateral surprises found in that kind of terrain.

Another thing I noticed after I got home. My house was the temperature it always is at the end of a work day in winter: mid 50s. The fires had burned down. The gas heater maintains a baseline so the pipes don't freeze, but I need to get the woodstoves going to get back up into the 60s. Usually the house feels chilly when I come in after eight or nine hours of incarceration at the shop with a half-hour drive on either end. But after a mere half hour of puppy stabbing and determined trudging I felt warm when I walked in and was warm for the rest of the evening. I lit the fires, but without the usual sense of urgency.

A bigger storm seems to be on its way to open up the rest of the trails to a depth that will permit more technically precise skiing. In cross-country skiing, a little bit does a lot. Smoother trails just mean you cover more ground for your effort. It becomes more like flying than walking. Kick the ball. Pull the puppy. Slide.

Speaking of Yellow Klister

After two days of great skating I needed a change of pace. George was just coming slowly back from his bout with the Jack Plague. That meant both of us went out on klistered classic skis on Sunday.

George launched earlier in the day, as the temperature crossed from the upper 20s to the mid 30s. He used Swix Silver Universal and some KR40 Violet klister to meet the granular early snow changing to the first moist patches where the strong sun worked on it.

By the time I went out, the temperature in the open was leaping past 40. Out on the Ellis, shaded areas might easily remain dry and firm. To meet that possibility I mixed some of the Silver Uni with KR70 Swamp klister. They don't call it swamp klister, they call it "Aqua."

George returned all smiles. His wax had worked well for his convalescent outing.

I had an excellent time on the Swamp 'n' Silver. In the growing slushy areas, nothing would glide extremely well. Other than that, though, the kick was bomb-proof, so I could propel a strong glide. Untrustworthy kick actually makes you slower. As usually happens, I steadily overtook everyone on the trail in front of me just with careful technique. No one's going to make a video of me, but I get around. It's fun to build the trip one stride at a time.

With good kick you have a solid launching pad for each glide.

Back at the shop, I didn't want to de-klister my skis when the forecast indicates I might want exactly that wax job again. To keep the skis safely away from anything that might get snared by the klister, I put some grid-wall hooks all the way up on grids on either side of one of the backshop windows. George and I laid our skis on this rack, safely above any clutter or traffic.

It's a cliche, but

Cross-country skiing is as much fun as sex, and most people look as bad doing it.

Like sex, cross-country skiing causes a lot of bodily secretions to flow. They just mostly come out of different openings. So cross-country skiers perform their exertions coated with glistening moisture. They grunt. They sweat. They breathe hard. Afterward they're suffused with a glow of satisfaction, or perhaps frustrated by an inadequate performance. Usually you feel better than when you started.

You'll see occasional beautiful people and professionally competent-looking performers. You have to wonder if it feels as good to those show ponies, or if it's just a job. Some of them do seem to know arcane secrets of ecstasy beyond the powers of the average grunt. Is it worth it? What if it isn't really any better, just strenuously kinkier? You never know until you try. But you increase the odds of hurting yourself when you try to get to those advanced levels. You could drown in the hot tub or fall from the trapeze or asphyxiate because you didn't get the scarf untied fast enough-- I mean you could hit a tree on the way down a steep trail you weren't ready for, or pull a muscle.

Go for it. Have fun. I, for one, won't be watching too closely.

Planning a stomp in the slushy snirt

Last night's kick wax experiment was a failure. New snow in the mid 30s just stinks. Forays at end of day leave no time for major revisions if the first theory fails.

Since almost no one has showed up today, I should be safe going out to skate. It won't be like arriving late at the buffet after everyone else has eaten the best stuff and leaned in the rest of it, leaving it to congeal as the flies gather.

The cellist says this is how musicians playing a gig always find the buffet.

Funny, that. In the stereotype of rock stars, they despoil the buffet and leave the dregs for the roadies. But most musicians are treated like any other servant, expected to produce on demand and stay out of the way the rest of the time.

A Little Less Silver, a Little More Swamp

Unsanctioned wax experimentation continued on Saturday in wet and frozen granular trail conditions.

Swix Universal Klister (K22) covered the range, but we didn't have an open tube. So we put on a mixture of Swix Silver Universal (K21), which has the same basic range as KR50 Flexi Violet (23-38F) and KR70, affectionately known as Swamp Gunk for its range from 36 to 52 F.

George reported adequate but less than stellar performance from it. It was hardly a fast day, but we could do better. I skewed the mix a little more toward Swamp, but not enough to achieve perfection. All in all, I can't complain, but perfection IS the goal in underground wax chemistry.

The kick was positive enough to launch long strides. The slush arrested the glide somewhat, but you could find a rhythm.

Torrential rains overnight ushered in a moderately hard freeze, so all that stuff had to come off the skis before we put them away. Fortunately, we had plenty of toilet paper. It's nice to freshen up the kick zone now and again.

Sklassical

Watching people ski over the weekend in the uncompressable sneet, an observer could see the fusion style of skiing people have in mind when they ask for combi skis.

The ski industry created the crippled mutant they call the combi ski, but teachers and coaches still envision skiers using it for one technique or the other, not both at once. Most models are skinny, built like either a classical or a skating race ski. Further down the line you might find progressively wider skis with softer and softer flexes intended to go further and further out of bounds.

The fusion, or sklassical ski is wider than a performance ski, and has a softer camber. A range from 48 to 52, maybe 55 millimeters at the tip is probably best, though you can assume the position and go through the motions on any ski.

The sklassical skier is one who has not developed strong technique in either skating or classical, but feels comfortable on skis as an eternal intermediate. The sklassical skater can manage V 1 and that's about all. In classical, the sklassicalist does not shift fully from one ski to the other. This is what keeps them from advancing in either technique. But the sklassical skier feels the drag of the kick zone when skating. This is what sends them to the shop in search of the mythical combi ski.

Sklassical skiers can be quite competent crossing terrain safely. Often they have good downhill skills, beyond the anxious fixed snow plow. Downhill skills are completely separate from propulsion skills. So, much as they might fudge it on the rolling ground and climbs, they can often come down with the best of them.

A sklassical skier could advance in skill by purchasing progressively more challenging skis. This is an expensive, long road, but if you just like to get out in the winter and learn things for yourself, it can be an enjoyable one. Lessons on technique-specific gear will advance your skills faster. But sometimes personal exploration yields deeper understanding of the principles. Or it can lead to well-solidified mistakes, repeated over and over. The danger is that the sklassical skier remains fixed in this mediocre wasteland, wanting things the equipment will only rarely provide, when aided by the most perfect conditions of weird snow. Sklassical works best when everything else works as haphazardly as sklassical.

Sklassical can be a good back-country technique. On one trip using waxable, double-cambered metal-edged skis, we skated on a Forest Service road because the wax wasn't gripping very well and the surface was firmly frozen. It wasn't much of a skate, since we had three-day loads in our packs, but we weren't going to move forward any other way. When we peeled off the wide road onto a narrow trail, we pulled back in to classical. It was more of an arduous stomp, since we were tromping through the mixed mess of snowpack and debris that followed in later January after the big 1998 ice storm.

On other occasions I have skated on wide, traditional-length exploring skis in upland beech forest and down along river floodplains. The snow was firm, taking an edge better than it held a track. In the best of conditions like this, one could take a real skating ski on some wild rides. I always worry about my poles in stuff like that, though, because real skate poles are way too long for comfortable fast descending through trees. I'd hate to bust my nice, light poles banzaiing like an idiot down some steep glade when I know it would be more fun with more turnworthy gear. Besides, I'm a wuss.

Real back-country skating is a complete topic all by itself. We may get some this year, with a good snowpack made dense by mild temperatures and plenty of moisture. Stay tuned.

Jarch

Adding to the new lineup of winter months, northern New England introduces Jarch.

You may recall last Decembruary, how novel it seemed to be skiing on full winter snow cover before winter had officially started. This made a nice contrast to the two winters of almost continuous NovApril that had marred the previous two years.

Now Jarch has arrived. Nighttime temperatures barely dip below freezing, while daytime highs in the northern part of the state flirt around on either side of 40. The storms have gone warm, assaulting the snowpack with streams of water.

In Jackson, the last storm sealed the snow with an inch of sleet, so the rain rolled off harmlessly. However, warm temperatures start streams of melt water eroding the snow from beneath, and eating at the edges of any thin or bare patch.

On the plus side, classical skiers can reliably use klister instead of taking their best guess at transitional-temperature "hard" waxes. Anything that spreads on the ski like melted Swiss cheese doesn't really qualify for the term "hard," but they aren't really klister, either. Fair enough, because what falls fresh and white at 32 and above doesn't qualify for the term "snow" for more than the first few minutes of a busy day on the trails. Now that the snow has definitely melted and refrozen, all its forms respond to klister or the trendy new miracle, grip tape.

Skate skiing improves also, especially right after morning grooming or the first bit of morning thaw. If the day warms much, skating becomes a plod.

In short, it's spring out there.

Past or present performance does not guarantee future results. Winter simply claims the whole spectrum of weather these days, not just the frozen varieties. There were even thunderstorms the other day. And Monday calls for snow.

Insidious Foe

Beech leaves in the track can bring a classic skier to a snappy halt when they stick to the kick wax. This specimen was actually captured inside the lodge near the wax room. Apparently the beech leaves have heard about the new XIMS product Leave Off, a leaf repellent currently being tested.

Decembruary

After two winters complaining that an endless November merged into an equally eternal April, this year brought full mid-season snow conditions before winter even began. Although today a warmer storm brings the thing we want the least, much of the rest of the month felt like midwinter.

Skiing classical, new gains bring new pains. The weight shift from ski to ski is done through the hips. This requires a slight but necessary rotation to line up body weight without swinging the shoulders too far. As the glide ski hip drives through, the pelvis has to twist so that the supporting leg stays under the body mass while the rear ski can swing up and back. At the same time, as the legs go one way, the arms go the opposite way. As you drive one leg forward, you throw the opposite hand forward, which brings the shoulder forward slightly as well.

During the jerky puppet phase of the season, while the body tries to reconstruct all this micro coordination, the hips seem like a solid block and the shoulders want to rotate too far.

A couple of days ago, my hips suddenly broke loose the rust that had held them. Each stride instantly became more powerful, but all the supporting muscles burned out shortly afterwards. I don't remember what all of them are called, but I can point to them. Yoga probably uses them, but not while sliding along a slippery track through icy air. Anyway, if they hurt, just keep skiing until they come into form.

Having shaken loose the classical form, I skated yesterday, having not enjoyed a good groin pull in a while. It wasn't that bad, but skating uses some of the same supporting muscles as classical, some different ones and some in slightly different directions, so another complex composition of tweaks and aches plays out.

Because of the timing of the holidays, I will be working eighteen days with only Christmas Day off. And I'm late leaving the house right now. Slacker.

Snow like Silk, Wind like Needles

Sunday's snow fell cold and fine, whipped and swirled by the northeast wind. It was a day to wax long for classical and leave the skate skis in the rack.

With temperatures in the lower mid-teens, Swix V 20 or VR 30 worked perfectly as long as you applied it long and thin. The skis slid smoothly through the silky powder in contrast to the stinging assault of the wind on the way across the open fields to reach the woods.

In the shelter of the trees the track no longer disappeared in drifted snow, at least not as quickly. This sheltered trail attracted most of the skier traffic, so they renewed the track as each one passed.

I felt less like a badly made puppet this time. Conditions steadily improve and I improve with them. The brain knows what to ask the body to do, but the body can't seem to deliver it with the same grace and power I remember from the best of every season past. But the short sections in which it all works get longer and more frequent until they merge into the continuous flow that keeps me looking for it.

The fact that February conditions have arrived at the middle of December doesn't seem as strange as it should. New England has traditionally been able to dish up an early winter just as easily as it produces depressing months of gray and brown with only slush and ice to coat the dead leaves and half-frozen mud. We choose to believe that the legendary winters are the true reality and the gray desolation is abnormal, but averages are made of extremes combined and divided equally. We're making out this year. That's all we can say.

Thumb It!

The best klister spreader is the human thumb.

Klisterphobes want to hold the beast at such a distance that they refuse to lay a finger on it. Consequently they deal with far more of a mess than those of us who pet the animal and gain its service gently.

The klister whisperer?

Fact: klister on your skin will be gone within the hour. Klister on a scraper will be there next year. Your skin's natural moisture repels the wax. Your tools do not have this natural remedy. You have to use lots of toxic solvent to achieve even partial cleaning.

Real klisterphobes just use waxless skis. But by doing that they rob themselves of some really excellent skiing. Klister works in certain mid-winter conditions in which a mechanical grip base performs poorly. And in clean slush, klister can give better grip and glide. As always with wax, you can adjust the length to balance grip and glide.

Remember to use the toilet paper method to remove klister after skiing. Simply pat a strip of common, household TP onto the klistered area. You may heat this with a hair dryer or heat gun if you like. Using an ordinary plastic scraper, scrape the toilet paper and klister off the base in one smooth pass. Use base cleaner and a toothbrush to clean off the last residue from base and sidewalls with minimal use of toxic, skin-drying solvent.

Pull the Puppy, don't Stab the Puppy

Peter the Great shared a few more techniques from his lessons when I told him how much I'd benefited from his guidance.

"To get them to keep their hands low as they bring the pole forward, I tell them to imagine pulling a reluctant little puppy on a leash. I want them to think more about bringing their hand forward than about jabbing down and pushing back with the pole.

"Pull the puppy, don't stab the puppy, I tell them. Pull the puppy, don't stab the puppy. Pull the puppy, don't stab the puppy," he repeated, as he demonstrated the stride and arm swing in the lodge.

I can just imagine him in the twilight of his life, rocking in a chair in the corner of a room, a blanket around his shoulders, while perplexed attendants wonder why he keeps muttering, "pull the puppy. Don't stab the puppy. PULL the puppy. Don't STAB the puppy. Pull the puppy..."

Meanwhile, Out on the Snow

The big storm arrived a couple of days ahead of the start of the Massachusetts vacation week, so the touring center had time to groom the trails several times before the crowds needed them. Deep snow meant it was time to use good skis.

Fast classical skiing requires a lot more finesse than a slow shuffle on touring skis. Fast skis have a stiffer camber, requiring better timing and balance in order to get any grip. It can be very frustrating, and drives many skiers to wax further forward or give up altogether.

Acting on a couple of tips from Peter the Great, I shortened up the wax and went out to practice.

Tip number one: when you kick forward with one ski, imagine kicking a tennis ball straight down the track in front of you. You have to keep your weight fully on one foot to kick with the other one. Imagining the ball keeps you pushing your foot forward, rather than kicking down and back with the weighted leg.

The first tip wasn't a new one for me, but when I combined it with the second one the results were remarkable. It was a new way to get to a precision I had felt before, but could not always produce on demand.

Tip number two: throw your hand forward as you throw your opposite foot forward. Arms and legs swing on alternate sides, just as they do when you walk or run, but the timing and direction matter more when you are balancing on a long, skinny stick sliding down a slippery track. Make sure the arm swings straight forward. Follow a natural arc almost like bowling, with your pole trailing. The arm swings up with a slight bend. The pole stays angled with the tip back. Peter tells students to imagine tossing a horseshoe.

Throwing the hand seems to make the leading foot come forward automatically. The foot touches down slightly forward of the knee. It's a long step. It even works on climbs. Because the foot leads, the body following it plants the wax firmly on the way over the top. In the dynamic process of skiing, one stride flows into the next. For fast touring, it's a relaxed, easy lope. Let the racers gasp and puke. Just doing the stride correctly, over and over, you'll cover a lot of ground faster than you thought you could. You can also make a colder wax work, making your glide even better. It does not take more effort, more strength. It just takes timing.

"I Hate Classical"

A woman handed me her skating skis.

"These need some base work," she said. "They need a good waxing. I can't put it off."

"We can fix that," I said. "Do you want them right away?"

"No, I don't want to rush you. But it means I'll have to do classical today. I hate classical."

With a few inches of fresh snow, the classical was great. The skating was less than ideal.

"Why hate classical?" I asked.

"After skating, being able to go so fast so easily, it's just horribly frustrating," she said.

"Yeah, but with the fresh snow today, classical will be much better than skating. Just wax long, and do that trick where you put a layer of the next colder wax over your layers of blue kick wax. That's working really well today. Just gear your mind down. It's all part of the dance on snow."

"You're right." She smiled. "That's the attitude I need."

Off she went.

Your own demands and expectations often create the difference between a perfectly enjoyable outing and a disappointing one.

Skating is great. I love the surge of power when the timing is just right. I love the leap of a freely-gliding ski, waxed to perfection. I love the constant subtle shifts of angle and poling. But I hate to plod through soft snow in a V-stance. I hate the drag of a slow skating ski when anything inhibits the glide. Dirty snow, deep new snow or really slushy old snow turn skating into a waddle.

Sometimes classical is faster than skating. Certainly when fluffy new snow has only been groomed one day, it is easier to wax long and kick lightly to fly forward on the classical tracks. Out on the skate lane, your angled edges just dig in. Unless you pole like a monster in a narrow V2, you can't help gouging deeply into snow that really needs another day and some more passes with the big machine to set it up.

Another writer compared classical to a fixed-gear bicycle and skating to a multi-speed. This seems true at first glance. You can stride faster or slower in classical, but you can't make changes as significant as from Diagonal V to V1 to V2, and all their variations. But the tempo changes in classical almost qualify as multiple gears. A cyclist on a fixed gear will ride uphill at a slower tempo than on the flats, and a much faster one on a descent. A classical skier goes the opposite way. Uphill, stride shortens and tempo speeds up to put the least stress on each individual moment of grip.

Double poling and double poling with a kick count as separate gears. Fit skiers can use these techniques over a greater range of terrain than recreational tourists will. So the classical skier has about four gears, compared to about seven for a skater. How you choose to use them is up to you.

Klister Control

Klister can be more of a blessing than a curse, but only if you control this feisty servant.

Wax in a tube, like glue that never dries, klister has developed its own legend, full of demonic behavior and the horror of ruined clothing and equipment. But it's not evil, just misunderstood.

Many people fear klister's reputation so much they add to it by dousing the kick zone of their klistered ski with a flood of solvent, waiting a few minutes and attacking the gooey mass with a plastic spatula. This will move a lot of klister out of the kick zone and give the illusion of some success, but when the solvent dries the ski will be as sticky as a plastic placemat in a pancake house. The klister hasn't gone away completely. Thinned by the solvent, it has just moved to new neighborhoods and settled down. It's all over the sidewalls and top sheet of the ski. It's under the edge of the binding plate.

To succeed with klister, you must be patient. You can't kill it with chemicals. You can't scrape it away with a plastic or metal scraper. But two items from your own bathroom can turn klister cleanup into a trivial problem.

You will need some toilet paper and an old toothbrush. You will need wax remover, but not a lot of it.

Carefully place one ski on the waxing profile. Unroll a strip of toilet paper the length of the klistered area. Pat this onto the klister. Some technicians suggest you heat the paper at this point, using a hot air gun or hair dryer, but be careful. Softened klister could escape if heat is applied too quickly. You want the klister to soak into the paper.

You can also use Swix Fiberlene or similar cleaning tissue, which is more rugged than toilet paper, but also more expensive.

Using a thin plastic scraper, start at one end of the kick zone and scrape firmly, at a shallow angle, to the other end of the waxed area in one smooth motion. This should pick up the paper and klister in one nice HAZMAT wad you can then flick into the trash can. Only a little residue will remain on the ski.

Dip your old toothbrush into the wax remover and scrub the leftover klister in the kick zone. This is also the time to scrub away the little boogers of klister that always hide along the lower part of the ski sidewalls, especially with cap skis. The protruding edge of cap skis makes a little ledge under which the klister hides all summer if you don't root it out with your last base cleaning before applying storage wax.

Repeat the toothbrush cleaning as necessary to get all the little klister insurgents out of their hideouts.

Your other choice is to do a hack job on the cleaning, or no cleaning at all, and pay me to clean it up at the beginning of ski season. But let me warn you: I'm not cheap.

Skiing Sick

I wasn’t really fighting a cold, but I wasn’t cooperating with it, either. Symptoms were mild, just a little stuffy nose and a general lack of energy. Until anything more definite came along, I would just keep skiing.

Because of the lack of energy, I skied slowly. Because of the excellent conditions, I skied classical.

Continuing to study technique and timing as I had recently observed them, I waxed only slightly heavily, and focused on complete weight shift, loading up for the most effective kick with the least effort.

Each time I have gone out to ski the busy Ellis River Trail in Jackson on a weekend or vacation week day, I have caught and passed everyone in front of me and been passed by no one. The point is not how great I am, because I’m not. It’s just the accumulated benefit of the little things. Even sick, and getting sicker, my slow pace was faster than anyone else’s.

Kick timing makes a huge difference. Fully shifting weight through the hip as the gliding foot shoots forward sets up the next stride. Drive the knee and flex the ankle as you throw the hip forward. Don’t step onto a stiff, nearly straight leg and expect to have any power in the next stride. But cross-country skiing is a whole made up of important parts.

Most people I see on the trail are not holding their poles correctly. Not only do they lose the power the strap would provide, the incorrect grip means they plant the poles at inefficient angles and can’t swing their arms in the proper rhythm to keep momentum going.

Classical skiing uses pendulums swinging in alternate rhythm. The legs have their timing and the arms have opposite timing. If the arms can’t swing freely and the poles can’t deliver power at the right time and strength, the whole machine slows down.

The problem may start with the beginner lesson. In a well-intended attempt to get people thinking about their footwork, instructors have them set the poles aside. Skiers are encouraged to stride without poles, to work on timing and weight shift, but it gives the impression the poles are an unimportant afterthought. This is wrong.

Skiers from alpine backgrounds are accustomed to holding orthopedic grips in their fist, which also does not translate well to cross-country poling.

Holding the poles wrong is worse than not holding them at all. If that pole strap doesn’t cross the palm and support the hand, allowing for a smooth release and follow-through, it blocks all the other movements a skier could do with the poles held right or not at all.

A really fit, technically proficient skier could have run me down and flitted past me easily. But that skier would only have been doing, at full strength, what I was doing on half power or less. At a faster tempo with more power in the kick, the speed range moves up dramatically.

Despite the fact that my cold was getting worse and my muscles felt like melting clay, I was not breathless and could enjoy the scenery. A couple of other skiers stopped me to point out a large beaver foraging along the partially-open river. It was a leisurely tour.

Skiers who started very young often have trouble describing what they do, because they learned it naturally, gradually, by doing it more than by thinking about it. Skiers who start as adults have to learn differently, because the human mind automatically tries to correlate new experience to old experience.

As I was describing the lift of the obliques to an instructor, she cautioned against curling sideways, which risks causing the shoulders to sway back and forth. She also mentioned driving the knee forward and flexing the ankle. When I focused on those elements, I found they reinforced the hip lift. I’d already made sure I was lifting my hip rather than dropping my shoulder to engage the abdominal muscles and lower back. Consciously placing the knee and ankle under everything completed the solid platform from which to kick onto the other ski. It even works amazingly well up hill.

Only by skiing sick and tired did I really discover how little effort I needed to get good glide. I couldn’t pole hard to make up for sloppy kick. I couldn’t speed up my cadence to make up for weak kick. I had to make each kick count, and really ride the gliding ski.

Classical Observations

The classical skiing has been exceptionally good around here with a series of snowstorms bringing packed powder conditions. Why waste that on skating?

The changes snowstorms bring depend on the type of snow and the time of day. If the snow falls at night, groomers can probably get out on it before you hit the trail. Then all you experience is a clean, fresh surface.

If the snow falls during your skiing day, things get trickier. If the snow is dry and powdery, you need to wax your kick zone longer, to spread your grip over more of the fragile snow. Otherwise, even with the right wax, you will slip because the snow shears away from itself.

With no-wax skis in fresh, loose snow, you may or may not notice any effect, depending on the grip pattern on your skis. You can’t really extend the grip zone of a mechanical-base ski unless you add wax at either end of the scale pattern. And it has to be the right wax.

One storm brought heavy snow and temperatures right around 32 degrees. It damaged trees, took out power lines and made very difficult skiing while the snow was falling. However, the dense snow packed well for later days.

The fresh snow can take a while to pack firmly, making the wide skating lane fragile. Forceful edging digs into the soft platform. The more delicate dance of classical loads the snow less severely.

Even after the snow settles, as long as it shows its powdery origins it provides endless kilometers of reliable kick and glide.

Sunlight is the poor man’s training video. How many of us can afford to have a coach tape us so we can see our flawed technique? But watch your shadow when the sun is at your back or coming directly from either side and you can see yourself in action for free.

A friend of mine likes to use the expression “hips high and forward” to describe proper classical form. In a fully-developed classical stride, you do throw your hip into it on each side, each stride, but I didn’t really feel the lift until recently.

You want to shift your weight fully from one ski to the other, but not so far that you fall to the outside of the track. I can recognize one fellow skier by the way his shoulders swing from side to side. It works for him, but he’s expending energy and losing some power.

When the stride feels the best, my shoulders are perfectly level. I know because my shadow tells me so. But as I shoot the gliding foot forward, ankle and knee flexed, if I consciously throw the hip forward and lift it toward my rib cage with the oblique muscles on the side of the abdomen, it accomplishes the weight shift and loads up that whole side of the body to fire a ferocious kick down into the snow for the next stride.

You can’t simulate this on dry land, because you are shifting your weight onto a moving foot, weighting the ski while lifting and driving the hip forward. Your foot is flat. The kicking leg is swinging back and up behind you.

As the gliding ski slows, remain on it with the hip lifted, until you are ready to kick for the next stride. The previous kicking ski is coming forward again, feeding into the track, but do not weight it until it comes up beside your gliding leg. At that instant, uncork the power of your compressed oblique muscles and all the other muscles from there down your leg. Shoot the hip forward on the new gliding side, lift and compress. Repeat as necessary.

The skier whose shoulders swing is compressing the obliques by bringing the shoulder down. Maybe the hip is also coming up, but swinging the shoulders moves more mass than necessary.

Lifting the hip properly is surprisingly tiring until your body gets accustomed to it. Those are weird muscles to make hurt. It’s funny to feel them get all pumped and sluggish from lactic acid. It also pulls on the muscles of the upper thigh. But when it all comes together it feels perfect.

When you first feel it, you may exaggerate the motion, as I did, to explore its limits. But I discovered it near the beginning of a busy couple of weeks of skiing. As I got tired, skiing day after day, I had to learn how to do it more economically, but still do it. Slow the stride down.
Really focus on balance, and on getting the most out of each kick. Try it on upgrades, to see how steeply you can climb before you have to speed up your tempo. Speeding up is correct, but methodical kicking helps you focus your power.

Striding is a dynamic process. Breaking it down by verbal description can’t help distorting the timing. But perhaps a concept or a phrase will stick in mind, and the rest of the process will fall into place around it.

Instructor Peter Theriault of Jackson Ski Touring observed that when he taught a lesson to a small group whose native language was not English, the students who tried to translate his words as best they could did not do as well as the one who knew no English at all. The one who could not understand had to learn by watching Peter exactly, imitating what he saw, with no distracting verbal filter.

“Don’t try to tell him what I said,” Peter told the other students. “Ask him to tell you what I did.”

Skiers have known for a long time that following better skiers is the best way to learn. But we do love to talk about things. It’s the next best thing to doing it.

Loosen up, Baby

People confuse tightness with control. They think of the iron fist. This leads to no end of trouble in skiing.

Tension strikes most often on the downhills, but it creeps in everywhere in cross-country skiing to make life harder.

Loosen up. Enjoy life. Git down.

Git down. This is distinct from “get down.” “Get down” is what you say to the cat when it’s on the kitchen counter, or the unauthorized dog on the couch. “Git down”is what you do when the music is good and you just gotta move with it.

Cross-country is a dance. It has its learned steps, but you respond to changes in the surface, the pitch, the tempo, mixing and matching those learned steps in combinations for the moment. Some muscles are tight, but the flow comes from knowing how tight to make the tight ones and how relaxed to keep the rest of them.

Most skiers hate to fall. Beginners especially hate to fall. So they tense up when things seem to be going out of control. Things just go out of control that much faster.

Look at a professional downhill ski racer. They fall pretty frequently. They almost never look tense, even as the whole thing explodes around them in a blast of snow and flying skis. That’s because they are trying to control the situation to the last. As a pilot friend of mine says, “you keep flying the plane.”

A military saying also springs to mind: “In an emergency, you don’t rise to the occasion, you fall to your level of training.” Military sayings are hip right now. Many are annoying, but that one makes a very good point. As you gain experience you will build a repertoire of quick, correct responses to various situations. You won’t always be right. But you will learn that stiffening up, drawing your body up and locking your knees is never right.

Git down. Never bend your waist unless you have already bent your ankles, knees and hips first. You may discover that by flexing from the ground up you no longer feel like locking your knees and sticking your butt out behind you like an awkward puppet.

I have been the awkward puppet many times. Only 12 years ago I despaired of ever learning to ski the wild ungroomed snow of what we loosely call the backcountry. The guy I was with, a skier almost since birth, was laughing so hard I wondered if he would ever inhale again.

You learn to find your speed range. Mine is only medium fast. If you like to go really fast, focus on steering at high speed and stopping quickly in emergencies. If you prefer more controlled speed, focus on techniques to keep yourself in your comfort zone without scraping away all the loose snow that people behind you might have wanted to use.

By starting to flex at the ankles and working your way up you will keep your springs and shock absorbers working all the time. You’d be amazed how much more secure you might feel on a downhill if you crouch right down in a tuck. Your center of gravity is instantly lower, so you feel less force throwing you off the outside of a turn. You are going faster than you thought you liked, but you are back in control. If you do fall, you are more likely to skid out and slide than catch an edge and get tossed airborne into a trailside tree.

Don’t tuck if you haven’t learned how to come out of it to slow down when you need to avoid another skier. But if you are rising from a tuck you have more control than if you were trying suddenly to crunch yourself lower.

Git down when you stride, too, just nowhere near as low. Remember to keep the joints flexed so you can apply power at the right time and follow through smoothly. As you get tired you will be tempted to stand up more. That is appropriate, but remember to mix it up, slowing down and standing up to rest, flexing down and springing along for short periods to keep yourself loose.

A trudging stride on soft skis will lull you into skiing without shifting your weight fully from ski to ski. You get perfectly good exercise and a pleasant slide through the woods. Those are both good. Try to practice some more dynamic techniques occasionally to help you out when things start to go a little faster than you might prefer. Git down. Loosen up. Throw a little jazz into that stately waltz. You can always slow down again.