Jon,

As long as it's below freezing and not icy it's quite simple. The waxes
have a fairly broad temperature range and you just pick the most
appropriate one and it almost always works well. If it slips too much you
might need to stop and make it thicker or go to a warmer wax. If it's
sticking too much you're still probably getting more glide than you'd get
with waxless skis, but you can always scrape a bit off and/or add a colder
wax on top.

Waxing becomes more of a challenge when it's right around freezing or
above. The waxes made for these conditions are inherently more sticky and
thus less pleasant to deal with, and much of the time they don't seem to
perform quite as well. You can get it right with a bit more effort, but
you might want to save your waxless skis for these conditions.

If the snow is "old", typically meaning there's been no new snow in a
couple of weeks or more, the snow crystals won't be sharp anymore and
you'll need to use klister. Some skiers absolutely refuse to use klister
because it's very sticky and tends to get on EVERYTHING if you're not
careful, but klister skiing can be some of the absolute best skiing there
is. Klister can give you incredibly secure kick and the old snow can give
you very good glide ... you get the best of both worlds.

The bottom line is that waxing skis IS a bit more work, but once you've
experienced skiing with properly waxed skis you'll find it hard to settle
for anything else.

Jim

At 01:32 PM 12/8/2002, you wrote:
>So just how hard is it to learn how to properly wax skis?
>
>Jon
>
>
>
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========================================
Jim Grau
Schlumberger-Doll Research
36 Old Quarry Road
Ridgefield, CT 06877
Office: 203-431-5303
Fax: 203-438-3819