Toko Report from Boulder Mountain Tour and World Masters

Report from Boulder Mountain Tour
From Cory Wubbels, Rossignol Team Technician

The 2009 Boulder easily ranks amongst the top 5 best racing conditions I have ever seen, but at 3:00 on Friday there was serious concern floating around Ketchum. I got a phone call or two regarding forecasts, I spoke to locals who speculated about weather or not it was going to be single digits at the race start or in the twenties, and what that would mean for their wax job. Thankfully I had a good morning of testing.

I tested at Prairie Creek around race time and found that the JetStream Blue was running well despite a roughly 25 degree snow temp. After loading up the Jeep I was interested in how the skis would run in the warmer snow near the finish so I rolled down 75 and arrived near the finish a bit before noon. I didn’t get an accurate snow temp but it was significantly warmer down there and was much warmer than anything the racers would see during the race, still the JetStream Blue ran favorably. From what I have seen, as long as you are in the west with dry air, cool evenings, and clean snow the JetStream Blue will be the wax of the day. At the City Of Lakes Loppet with dirtier more humid “Midwestern conditions” we went with JetStream Red on Bjorn Batdorf’s winning boards.

So, Friday night before this year’s Boulder I slept easy knowing that regardless of a 6 or 20 degree start, we would have fast skis. Congratulations Zach! His races skis had a fine old structure covered with:
1:1 H.F. Blue and H.F. Grey
H.F. Blue
J.S. Blue

Report from World Masters in Autrans, France
By Rick Reynolds

Autrans, France sits in a typical European valley. On the first day of course inspection the snow had a clean appearance to it, however, one of the first things I noticed was the density of wood smoke in the air (again typical for a European valley). While snow may appear clean this doesn’t mean it is. When making your wax choice the cleanliness of the snow and the air quality need to be a major consideration. The dirtier the snow the harder the wax needs to be. Due to the air quality I considered this snow to be Dirty!

At the worlds, the 10k skating race always follows the classic race and is held in the afternoon. At this venue that meant regrooming the course between races. The temps were in the 40’s, we had had some rain, and now the snow was really dirty. The afternoon race was going to be held on dirty, loose corn!

Because of how dirty the snow was the wax I choose was: LF Moly, HF Red, JetStream Red roto corked, and after testing skis I lightly rubbed on JetStream Red and then used a thermo pad. I used my softest pair of Rossignols with a broken linear grind. Out of over 100 racers in the M5 group I had the Fastest pair of skis on the course! The next day, during lunch, the Swiss silver medalist even commented on them! This was on of those days, I picked the right pair of skis, had the right grind and the wax was on the money!

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