We like to get out of the shop and into the snow as much as we can to keep up on the latest innovations and ideas.  These last few months have been good opportunities for learning as we've been getting huge amounts of feedback from our racers and coaches in the field as well as first-hand experience testing grinds, racing, and helping out at the races.

 

Peter is currently  in Austria waxing skis for the US Winter Triathlon Team as they compete in the World Championships.  Look for an article on his experiences there soon.  Nathan was just up at the XC World Cup in Vancouver and is heading out to be a part of the US Ski Team's wax crew for World Championships in Liberec, Czech Republic.  He just returned from visiting AceCo to see how they make the Finite Finish Structure Drums and discuss development of new structures for that tool on the way out to the Boulder Mountain Tour.  More on that shortly... 

 

Shawn is getting ready for the Norwegian Birkebeiner in March, while Eric and Adam have been busy coaching the junior team to qualify 10 of their kids for Junior Olympics.  We haven't heard from Zach much as he has his nose buried in testing at the Olympic venue.  Just some occasional grind formulas arriving via email...

 

We'll try to send some updates as we learn more.  If you have any questions for us or of athletes, coaches or wax techs at the World Championships, please send them to info@bouldernordic.com and we will do our best to track people down and find out what you want to know.  Enjoy the races out there and best of luck on your own adventures.

It's show season, which means all the new gear for 09-10 is rolling out.  We've started to get some good tests on new skis from Fischer, Rossignol and Salomon, as well as exciting new boot updates as well.  We'll get a full report out as we get more testing in at the World Championships, but check out a sneak peek at some of the new gear at bouldernordic.com in the next few days...

 

We've been continually adding products to our selection and we finally have a lot of it up on the web.  BNS is now a Solda dealer and we stock a good selection of paraffins and powders not only from Solda, but SkiGo, Swix, Toko and Start.  We've been very impressed with Solda HP05 for many years and it is always among our favorites in cold weather with mid-range humidity.  It always seems to be running at the Birkie.  The S-20, S-30 and S-32 cold powders are always a good bet for cold, dry snow and the F40 and PowerJet waxes seem to do well in a broad range of conditions.

 

We've also been very impressed with some of the liquid waxes and rub-on top-coats as we experiment more and more with them.  SkiGo C105 liquid has added noticeable speed in a very broad range of conditions in our testing and we have been hearing the same from coaches who have been using it all over the place.  From frigid weather in Anchorage to fresh, new snow just below freezing it has been very impressive. 

 

The more we test these things, the more we are starting to think that all you really need to do to have fast skis is get close with the base paraffin, put a good fluoro coat on top of it and then nail the top coat.  While the liquids are not usually durable beyond 10-15km, they speed things up so much during that time that they are becoming a factor even in long distance races.

 

If you have any wax questions, or want to track down an obscure concoction that you can't find on our web site, give us a call.  We probably have some vials of it laying around and just have not been able to get it on the web yet.  We are always happy to discuss waxes and how to make your skis fast.