J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

Some of the comment in the press about the fantastic season start is a bit overstated. It's been pretty good and a relief after last year but it's not as good round here (the plateau) as a couple of years back. The various tourist offices are quite to happy to say it's the best season start ever and lazy reporters are happy to repeat it.

The size of some snowfalls, especially Austria and the Swiss/Austrian border, has been record breaking of course, it's something that's measured and recorded and easy to compare. That's probably formed the basis of these claims about record breaking conditions.

We did actually expect it to snow, it's why we all went out in November and fitted winter tyres and the commune went out and stuck up all the snow poles and brushed off their snow plough :D

That's not to say it's not good of course, no one's going to go bang on the tourist office door and complain that conditions are only fantastic instead of the best ever :D

So much snow that in some places though that it's caused problems, in Morgins a tree got uprooted and hit the lift necessitating a rescue of 4 people and the lift was out of action for two days, a photo (from Tele Morgins, with permission) here :

we can do a digging the car out thread :

Dshenberger wrote:There are issues with durabilty/ wear on the ski. Regular waxing makes the skis last longer. Unless you can afford to buy new skis every year, you may wish to wax on a regular basis. :)

Does it? I've never heard that before. The closest I can guess as to why that could be true is that a regular wax process will "flush" through a sintered base removing foreign particles but I'd be pretty surprised if that was ever much of an issue.

Dshenberger wrote:Now, as to performance. . . Skiing, for most of us, is about enjoyment - not a race against the clock. But, as a pleasure activity some of us desire to expend the least amount of effort while we have fun. Why work hard if you don't have to? A properly waxed ski is just easier to use! Yes, it may be possible to be "faster," but we go back to the sports car analogy. :) Why would you want to have to "push" yourself if you can just glide there!

Now, I am not trying to tell anyone they have to wax their skis, but for some of us it is a necessity!

The trouble with the sports car analogy is that we're going downhill :D It's your brakes (and suspension etc.) that allow you go faster down a hill :D For skis that would be your edge of course and that's exactly what allows you control your speed.

It's an interesting enough subject but the answer the question that Hamish posed is no, it just doesn't make a difference, all that's really true is two things:

1. some wax is better than no wax
2. universal, or a high temp' range, wax is better than the wrong specific wax.

What you don't need is a box full of expensive waxes and a hour each morning with a snow thermometer testing the snow.

Jan I Stenmark wrote:
And so it is with a well tuned and waxed ski. Suddenly everything feels just a bit easier, the turns are just a bit smoother, the carves can be pushed just a bit further and life feels just a bit better.

To be fair he was asking about wax, it's hard to do much with a ski that's not got a decent edge on it on piste particularly as it gets firmer and towards ice, off-piste or powder even that doesn't make a deal of difference.

It's hard to justify trying to use a dozen types of wax and finding the perfect one, it works for racers as they need to find the right one for a couple of minutes on a known terrain. For the rest of us it's just a recipe for turning up with exactly the wrong wax for the majority of conditions we'd see in a few days or even hours.

Hamish Macbeth wrote:Does it make any real difference to us who just want to get to the bottom in one piece?

Is it worth the effort if our middle name isn't Bode or Benni?

not a great deal in my experience, certainly in some problematic snow types, ie wet snow or slush, it's a help or if you know you're going to have to schuss a lot otherwise it's not a big deal. Bandit is here right now and her wax is way better than mine, on a flat section she easily glides past me and her skis don't have holes in them either for that matter, but once we're moving downhill and off-piste it's not a big deal.

I stick some universal wax on from time to time and that works just fine.

bluebird wrote:try piste to powder,an english run off piste guiding school.you join a group up to 7 pax,all day equipment supplied all for 85 euros

never used them but I've heard many good things.

Budvegas wrote:Hi all

Anyone got suggestions on the best kinds self servicing kit. Any help would be great

Cheers

I have this :

http://www.tooltonic.com/tuningFile.asp

quite handy, pocket sized edge sharpening, so useful I use it in preference to full kit sometimes.

Gwiwenneth wrote:hi there!

I decided to marry a duch ski istructor in Austria!
but for languages problem we moved to France.

He has a diplom called anwaerter or anwarter, and we tought that, moving from an european country to another.... there want be any problem!
but it's not so...

in france seems that this diplom in not reconized completely and that he needed to pass a so called
SKI DU TEST ALPIN

he will have his test in few days but now some ski school said that is not enough !!!!

do you know anything about it??

what shell we do to have his degree reconized ??

many many many thanks to everybody will help us !!!

Really he ought to contact ÖSSV and/or ISIA and ask them.