Prepping new skis for ski touring with pulk

[flai]

Hey,

I recently bought Åsnes Combat NATO skis for ski touring. I will for now be using these exclusively for ski touring with a pulk and I'm planning to exclusively use skins for now (I have short mohair X-Skins and full-length Nylon skins). I might do some day trips or get into grip waxing at some point, but these are not in the plans at the moment. I will be doing at least a couple of ~week long ski tours this year. For these trips I'm not too worried about glide performance, me and my companions are gonna go on a pretty easy pace.

I am completely new to maintaining skis and honestly I'm a bit confused on what I need to do. Can I just slap skins onto the skis and go skiing? Should I take the factory wax off with a scraper and apply base wax/glide wax/something else? I would be interested in hearing both:
- The minimum steps to take to be able to go on my trip
- Additional steps I could do if I wanted to have a better result.

As for skins, am I correct that just some sort of impregnation spray or wax is enough?

Thanks in advance!

[Crayefish]

I had the same question for my expedition outfitter when I got my Gammes for the same purpose. He advised just to get some Colltex skin/ski wax and just use that for all. You won't have speed so hot wax isn't needed. I install the skins and then just wax the expose ski base and skins. I don't wax under the skins (or remove any factory wax). It's worked perfectly.

On my tours and expeditions I'll take a block (multi week) or lipstick thing (multi day) of that wax and just reapply every couple of days.

One word of caution with the X-skins though... the Mohair are delicate! I've given up on mine as they wear around the heel area mega fast. I now only use the mix X-skins (with a nylon as a backup) as they're much more durable and barely any change in glide for pulking speeds. I take 1 mix X-skin set per week or two... soft snow is fine but abrasive ice or other shit underfoot can chew through skins, so I'd not head out for longer tours without a spare. You don't want to have to use the full length nylons unless it's life or death!

[Musk Ox]

Hello! Welcome!

You don't need to do anything to new Åsnes skis whatsoever.

You'd be 100% fine simply sticking your skins on, spending twenty seconds to wax the skins to stop them icing, and hitting the snow.

You have a pulk, you have skins, you're not racing against the clock, in my fallible opinion the skis will be absolutely glidy enough for it to be enormously enjoyable.

However! New skis! Mmm.

As I'm sure you know, there's a school of thought that it's worthwhile putting on a layer of soft glide wax and removing it while it's warm to get rid of grinding gunk and to scrape off little hairs of P-Tex.

I think that's entirely pointless. The gains will be so infinitesimally marginal for wide skis in deep snow with a pulk that it's a waste of skiing time.

Please note I have done this pointless thing, and might do it again.

You can get rid of any P-Tex hairs in thirteen seconds with a pad of fibretex. Maybe I'd clean the bases with base cleaner. I suspect this is also pointless. And I'd iron on some glide wax for the conditions, and finish off with a good rub of magic fibertex to make them shiny.

The new Swix glide sprays are really good and usably durable and if you're doing a multi-day cabin tour you can use them en route without too much inconvenience. They're really good.

Take a block of rub-on wax for the skins, definitely, to stop them icing up. Some Pomoca or whatever, they're all basically the same. I agree with @Crayefish that you'll want to take some spare skins. And a pad of magic fibretex.

I think the most important thing is keeping them clean and shiny when you get home. With a pad of fibretx.

This advice is bought to you by fibretex.