A little climbing skin TLC goes a long way to ensuring happy days in the mountains.
(Shop for climbing skins at Backcountry.com or Cripple Creek.)
Care and best practices for your trusty climbing skins
Without a good pair of climbing skins to get them up the mountain, the fastest and lightest touring setups are hopelessly relegated to skiing downhill. These pieces of glue and hair are typically afterthought. It’s easy to spend time researching and maintaining the flashy boards, boots and bindings, but it’s the lowly climbing skin that really makes the magic of winter travel possible.
I have a very close friend and avalanche forecaster who was continually frustrated about how often he had to replace his climbing skins. Of course, the daily rituals of an avalanche forecaster will inevitably wear out a skin faster than the average tourer, but I was still surprised to find that his skins would rarely make it through a season. He told me of his meticulous care, including drying them, fully open and hanging over night. He was also insistent about using a mesh skin saver for extended periods of storage.
Meanwhile, I remain one of the most irresponsible skin owners I know and often forget to take them out of my pack all together as I race from morning dawn patrol to work. Sheepishly I’ll pull them out of my pack days later and still a little wet. So why was I getting over twice the days on a pair of skins than my more attentive friend? To coax extra performance and longevity out of a pair of trusty climbing skins there are some pitfalls to avoid and some simple best practices to employ.
How to dry after use
The world of uphill skiing is a cold and icy one and climbing skins get wet. There is nothing worse than leaving your skins out in the cold overnight to then have them immediately fail on the uptrack.
So, it’s a common misconception to dry them out within an inch of their lives. Overheating or over-drying the glue on your skins will decrease the amount of days you get to use them before reaching for a new pair or the dreaded transfer sheets to reglue.
Exposing the glue to the air while drying is a major factor in degradation of the glue. Although leaving your skins open to dry out for an entire day only imperceptibly breaks down the glue, doing this repeatedly throughout a season or two can deteriorate the adhesive. Feel free to separate them for an hour or two while they dry, but it is best to store a skin folded glue to glue to keep it fresh. Keep in mind that the plush will still climb a skintrack, even if its a little damp.
Heat can also be deadly to skin glue, so make sure you leave plenty of distance between your skins and the woodstove on your next hut trip.
How to storing climbing skins
In the day-to day use of skins, simply getting them mostly dry is good enough but extra care should be taken for letting them hibernate for more than a week or two. For any long term storage the rule of heat still applies. Leaving them by a heat source means you will likely have glue on your skis come the next big day in the mountains. Storing them in a cool dry place is best. Chest freezers are a sworn summer tactic by some and although extreme, can hold your skins in cryogenic stasis until that wonderful time of year when flakes fly again.
In recent studies performed by Pomoca, mesh skin savers can also be a no no. Counter to popular belief, the plastic mesh of skin savers can allow air to dry out or glob your glue when you are not using them. However, some skins are nearly impossible to separate after long storage so use a piece of non perforated plastic to keep air off the glue and to prevent the two adhesive sides from sticking together.
Perforated plastic is the preferred backing material for longer term skin storage.
Waxing for climbing skins
Dry bases on your skis can wreak havoc on older pairs of climbing skins. Waxing your skis every few times you go skiing is ideal although sometimes unrealistic. When you skis appear white and chalky on the bases, you have waited far too long. Wax your skis early and often to make sure your skins don’t leave a sticky mess behind.
Waxing the plush side of your skins is also important for maximum performance. Just as wax for your ski bases repel water and snow particles as you slide downhill, wax coated on the hairs of your climbing skins increases glide and prevents glopping on the way up. High-end skins like Pomoca Climb Pro S-Glide for skiers or the Jones Nomad Pro for splitboarders, come with a hydrophobic treatment from the factory. However, even the best treatment will breakdown over a season of skinning, and then it’s time to bring out the wax. There are dozens of products marketed specifically to use with skins, but even a normal warm weather wax will work just fine.
Crayoning wax into the skin can help as a quick fix.
Crayoning the wax on your ski will work for a lap, but if you have the time to quickly melt the wax with an iron, it’ll last longer. Rub the wax against the grain for maximum penetration between the follicles and quickly run an iron on medium heat from skin tip to skin tail. Two or three quick passes will do it, but make sure you do not overheat the glue (see above for the risks of overheating glue).
With a little bit of practice and the correct equipment, winter peaks are ever within reach. Next time you are traveling straight up a groomer at the resort or kick turning your way to a new summit, give a little nod of appreciation to your climbing skins that keep you moving forward in the mountains.
(Shop for climbing skins at Backcountry.com or Cripple Creek.)
26 comments
Interesting about the mesh skin savers. I use those mesh savers with each of my 5 pairs except for 1 and it doesn’t seem affected by storing them glue side together. I do move my skins and wax kit out of the shed and into the home for summer storage to avoid high temps.
Along those lines, any research or anecdotes about pulling apart skins repeatedly to “activate the glue?”
How about “reviving” glue with a few passes of a heat gun?
Scott: we’ll have a whole post coming up soon about preventing skin failure and reviving them in the field, so stay tuned on those points.
Excellent, Doug! Every word. I learned about hot-waxing skins from Steve Romeo (RIP) . Hot waxed skins will not glop up with ice for 10 – 20 days of touring in my experience. If your skin plush has already got wet and refrozen and you are scraping them and rubbing on glop stopper on a tour you are way too late and the effectiveness is very limited. Also, I recently realized that the water that I see in the form of puffs of steam when I iron my glue with parchment paper to de-glop the glue doesn’t get there from direct contact with the snow. It comes seeping through the backing of wet plush. This is why crayoning the wax generously against the grain of the plush is also good for your glue. And don’t even get me started on the evils of that mesh. Such a waste of plastic. Thanks!
I am a full convert to hot waxing skins. Still get lots of weird looks.
I used those mesh ‘savers’ for refrigerator summer storage for many years. At first use, maybe 6 or 8 years ago, I found little specks of black plastic all over in the glue. Apparently, the plastic of the mesh sheets had aged while on a shelf out of the sun during the Winter months! I stripped the glue from the skins and renewed with BD glue transfer sheets. I threw away all those those mesh sheets.
Hi Doug, thanks for the article. You referenced some studies, any concrete links? 😉
Any recommendation on what wax to use for hot waxing. I’ve used the BD skin wax in the past but wonder if there’s a better, cheaper option.
Any warm temp wax does the trick in my opinion
eg. SWIX yellow.
I’ve even used a “universal” temp wax in the past and it got the job done
This confirms my highly scientific method that has kept my ten-year-old Voile (BD) splitboard skins absolutely refusing to die: after each tour (2-3 times a week) I keep them crumpled in the bottom of my mostly-empty pack hanging in a closet with the zipper open to allow air wafting. During the summer, I keep them crumpled in the bottom of the same pack, but in a darker, cooler closet. I just checked on them and they’re right where I left them in May, now anxiously awaiting the first 6″-on-grass of the new season!
Interesting and fascinating. I’d love to hear from BD and the folks who designed their mesh backing for their thoughts on storage. And great idea on hot waxing!
I tend to only hotwax (rub in, gentle run over with iron as described above) in spring when worried about sticky snow conditions so use a whatever is around warm ski wax.
After touring I air-dry the skins then either store them glue-side to glue-side or put them on the skis if climbing is first on the to-do list. For off-season storage, I always put them on the skis. I get about one hundred-fifty days from a pair of Contour Hybrid skins. Being old and feeble, my days may be shorter than young punks’ days.
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As for skin waxing, I go with field crayoning when needed. Same for the ski soles. Same wax too. My excuse for this slacker approach (I’m a slacker!) is that wax contaminates skin glue. Luckily, the Contour Hybrid glue is cleanable. I do that also as needed. (Goo Gone works great for that)
I carry wax to but IME if I use ski-skin-proofer one app will do for the season, it also keeps the plush from wetting out so I’m betting spray on DWR for gortex apparel is the same stuff. I think its important to make sure to dry skins enough that water doesn’t sit on the glue so I dry the glue side and store them glue to glue. Heating glue that is migrating to bases and gloppy with a waxing iron can rejuvenate glue, recently I been using the iron directly on the glue with good results but I use parchment for full reglue jobs.
The purple glop-stopper is good to have in the pack, but if I remember to treat my skins with Nikwax’s Ski Skin Proof once a season, the glop-stopper is almost never needed. It’s nice to have, though, in case a touring partner’s skins glop up. I will, occasionally, apply the glop-stopper to increase glide for flat approach/egress routes.
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Nikwax claims their product adds water repellency, eliminates saturation, and prolongs the life of climbing skins.
I bought some of that and a kohla product called dry climb that is a hydrophobic coating for the skins that you spray on then hair dryer to activate the water repellency. I haven’t tried either yet but now I know how often to use the nikwax product.
XXXer, just noticed you beat me to the punch!
Black Diamond recalled their mesh about 4-5 years ago for that surface breakdown problem. I use their updated mesh with no issues, but the comments about drying out the glue are interesting. Anyone have a source for plastic sheeting to use?
This site sells skin wax, skin waterproofing treatments, skin carpet by CM, glue renew, skin tails and clips from lots of manufacturers. They sell a lot more than the website menus categories list. If you search for products you can find them easier then the categories listing (seems to be missing some of the products).
Thoughts on length of skins? I see a trend towards choosing shorter skins with ~20 or more cm of tail left bare. I have no experience with this but reports are glide is improved with no loss of traction.
IME choosing too short ^^ could mean a broken tail strap might no longer be long enough, chi-chi tip clips can also limit the adjusta/switchability of a skin to another ski, so the simple tip loop with the skin folded back & stuck to itself gives you 2 points of adjustment and is the most adjustable way to attach your skins
Great Article! I will definitely be trying the waxing tip for the spring and getting rid of the mesh.
Thanks Daniel!
Mesh is a waste of time, and it ruins your skins. Wax on your plush is good, but its a bit of a pain, and there is such a thing as too much. Also – gotta be sure if your iron that the temp is not too high. I prefer the spray stuff we have in shops in Europe. It does not last as long, but its easy.
One thing though – both wax and that spray stuff often has Fluorocarbons in it – and that stuff is super-nasty for the environment. Tough to find anything without it though.
Oh – and the single most important factors in skin life are 1) are you a dog owner? and 2) how much nur and gradul do you have in the bottom of your pack?
Can I assume that it doesn’t matter what you waxed with before you used the iron on the skins? I wipe down my iron in between use so there won’t be much wax left on it, but there will be some. Also, ditch the plastic between the skins altogether or just those that are mesh type with holes?
Hey does anyone have some good pointers regarding skin glue condition over longer races or tours? Had a near catastrophic skin failure up Star Pass during last years GT that I’d like to not repeat…luckily we were close enough to the top to hike up and over and then get down to the checkpoint with the fire pit (to warm the glue)…I was on some Hagan race skins…
Do you have any tips for reactivating the ‘glue’ on pomoca pro 2.0 skins?
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