How to Care for Your Skate Skis, Year-Round
The best way to ensure a great day on your skis is to have the correct wax. You’ll glide past your friends and rest assured that you’re protecting your brand new investment for years to come.
If you’re a recreational cross-country skier, after a quick internet search you might be thinking that waxing your own skis is more than you bargained for. Most of the how-to videos are 25 minutes long, and that’s just showing how to treat a single ski! Plus, these guys are wearing aprons with nametags on. It hardly seems approachable, and definitely not fun.
But you know what is fun? Skiing. Fast.
With a small investment of time and money, you can learn how to do it yourself—ultimately saving money on dozens of service fees and skiing further, faster. Let’s get to it.
Build Your Toolkit: Skate Ski Waxing Equipment
As with any new activity, you can expect an initial upstart cost to caring for and waxing your own cross-country skis. While there are countless ways to expand your toolkit, here are the basics for an ideal garage waxing setup.
Nordic Waxing Spanner: Holmenkol - $140
These clamps attach to any work bench and allow you to apply maximum pressure while scraping your skis. Setting the skis on a couple of sawhorses, or the backs of chairs as recommended in some online videos, is a recipe for frustration and a bad wax job.
Iron: Holmenkol Smart Waxer - $90
The main benefit of using a ski-specific iron? You can set it to the correct temperature for the wax you’re applying. (Using a clothes iron isn’t ideal for a number of reasons, one of which is that you won’t be able to use it on your clothes ever again.)
Groove Scraper: Holmenkol Groove Scraper - $6.80
The groove scraper is crucial for getting wax out of the one or two grooves that line the bottom of your ski. While you can use a Sharpie, the groove scraper has a specific design that allows you to get all the wax out, and even scrape it off the sides of the ski.
☝🏼 TIP: Always use the groove scraper before scraping the rest of the ski. This ensures the remainder of the ski is protected, should you accidentally jump out of the groove with your tool.Scraper: Holmenkol Scraper - $6.80
The plastic scraper is the workhorse of your toolkit. After using the groove scraper, you’ll go tip-to-tail with the scraper to remove the bulk of the wax. While only $8, it’s important to use a sharp scraper so that it’s as effective as possible. (Scraper sharpeners can run $80 plus.)
Steel or Bronze Brush: Holmenkol Bronze Base Brush - $28.80
There are a wide variety of brushes you can boast in your kit (including roto brushes), but you’ll need at least a steel or bronze brush as well as a nylon one. Used after the scraper, the steel brush removes additional wax in a tip-to-tail motion.
Nylon Brush: Holmenkol Nylon Brush - $20.40
Lastly, run the nylon brush (you guessed it, tip-to-tail) across the base of the ski to polish it up as your final step.
Learning When to Wax Your Skate Skis
Professional cross-country skiers will wax their skis before every competition and even most training days. For the rest of us, it’s more likely that we will only need to wax our skis a couple of times a season. Here’s your guide to understanding when.
When Conditions Change
Here in Colorado, conditions are pretty predictable in that we will have consistent temperatures and moisture content for the bulk of the season. When the temperature does change, it’s a sign you need to update your wax—and that could be the difference between a morning ski and an afternoon one.
If you typically drive up from the Front Range and ski at around 10:00am, you should be able to use the same wax for much of the season. But if you’ve rented a condo in the mountains and are switching between skiing early morning and early afternoons, play with how your skis feel in different conditions and consider waxing accordingly. There is a huge difference between skiing on zero degree snow and 20 degree snow.
☝🏼 TIP: Many Nordic areas have designated wax rooms where you can bring your kit to quickly wax before heading out for the day. Once you have the process dialed in, this shouldn’t take longer than 15 minutes including clean-up.
If The Trails Are Dirty
The bottom of your skis are porous, which is how they absorb wax. But that also means that they will pick up any dirt or unwanted residue on the trail. When you wax your skis, watch for dirt coming up in the wax you scrape off (hint: it will be black). If your skis are particularly dirty, you will want to apply a layer of yellow wax to lift the dirt out of the base before applying your actual “working” wax. Think of it as a day at the spa for your skis!
When the Bottom of Your Skis is White
Ok, you’ve completely ignored your skis for three years. What do the bases look like? If the normally black P-Tex base is turning grey or white–most common beneath your foot or just behind it–your skis need some moisture, stat. This can also happen after a few hours of skiing on hard and fast snow—aka ice. You should not ski on them again until applying new wax.
At The Beginning and End of the Season
Before you store your skis for the summer, it’s important to put on a layer of protective wax. Apply yellow wax in order to prevent them from drying out, and remember to store skis in a temperature controlled space—never the garage, or even worse, attic. At the beginning of each season you’ll remove this layer and then apply a new “working” wax appropriate for current conditions.
You’re Ready: How to Wax Your Skate Skis
Because a video is worth well over a thousand words, we recommend watching one of the videos provided by the experts at Salomon Nordic or Boulder Nordic Sport.
In addition, look for a hands-on lesson at your local Nordic shop. Don’t have one? Most multi-day clinics incorporate a waxing element. (We have great first-hand experience with the women’s clinics at Frisco Nordic Center and the Thanksgiving Camp in Crested Butte.)
In general, there are a few things to keep in mind. Remember to always wax tip to tail, and to never overheat the base of your ski. It only takes a few seconds to permanently ruin your brand new skis. If your iron is smoking, it is too hot. You can run one hand along the ski to monitor how hot it is becoming. Remember, 2-3 passes are all it should take to get the wax to fully coat the base of the ski!
But Wait! What Wax Should I Use?
We would need an entire website to fully describe the intricacies of glide wax for skate skis. But to break it down to the absolute basics, glide wax is categorized based on snow temperature. Certain colors of wax indicate certain temperatures across brands. Very cold is turquoise and blue, midrange is purple, and warm is red. Yellow is realistically only used as a cleaning and storage wax. We recommend asking your local Nordic shop for recommendations as to their favorite brand and why. You should have a couple of options in your toolkit, but you do not need them all.
☝🏼 TIP: The temperature needed to iron in a certain wax will be listed on the front of the wax packaging. You will need a higher temperature for a colder wax, lower for warmer, etc.
Is There Anything Else I Should Know?
What the Heck is Hotboxing?
The perfect solution for neglected skis, a hotbox service is a lot like what it sounds. Skis are put into a custom-built convection oven that keeps a consistent temperature, safely saturating the base of the skis with wax. According to Boulder Nordic Sport, one hotbox treatment equals about 15 wax jobs. (See their website for the full menu of service options.)
Structuring: Sounds Serious
You’ve loved your skis for years now, and have been taking good care of them with regular waxing and proper storage. It may be time to treat them to a stone grinding service. This service goes way beyond wax: it impacts the actual structure of the base of your ski.
Essentially, an expert technician will flatten the ski base by hand, removing burnt and damaged material, and then create a new structure pattern. You will select a structure together depending on your personal skiing style and preference, where you ski, and how many pairs of skis you have in your fleet. When you go pro, you might just have a pair for high moisture days, a pair for dry and cold days, and your beloved original pair of skis that you now save for those early season days…with rocks.
Interested in learning how to skate ski at Sisu Ski Retreat next year? Sign up for our waitlist, here.
