Snow sticking to skins??

After seeing the problem skiers have been having with large amounts of snow sticking to their skins the last couple of weekends, I thought I'd throw out a tip I learned on Telemarktips.com. which has worked great for me - silicone spray.<br><br>I've tried skin wax, candle wax, and hard ski wax without much success. I started using silicone spray 2 seasons ago and it's pretty much eliminated the problem. I say pretty much because it wears off after a while and being lazy I don't re-apply until I start getting a little sticking. Depending on how much you skin a couple time a season may get you by.<br><br>The recommendation also comes with some warnings. Only use high quality, non-staining silicone spray. There have been stories of people spraying their skin while they were on the skis and the petrolium in some brands causing the ski to delaminate. I've only used the brand that was recommended - CRC Heavy Duty Silicone (non-staining, part no. 06077). I buy it at West Marine near the south end of Lake Union. <br><br>I hook one end on a nail and hold it tight so only the hairy side is showing, then liberally spray. They dry almost instantly. They will have a little less gripping power the first time out. It's only been a problem for me in conditions like this last weekend, where you have 1-2 inches of snow on a hard icy surface. However, the trade off is not having the snow stick to the bottoms, so it's well worth it.

I have never had a problem with skins balling up after the application of Glop-Stopper or similar. Then again, yesterday Sky and Dave's skins were glopping up, but mine weren't and none of us had any skin wax.  ???

Paul,<br>I find that snow accumulates on my skins much worse any time I'm breaking trail.  Maybe if you tried that some time, hmmm?

??? Dave wasn't breaking trail and he had plenty of snow stuck to his skins.

Sounds like Sky is maybe hard to keep up with. Or a sucker. I'm guessing the former.<br><br>Sounds like a multifactorial problem - crap on skins, whether you're breaking trail or have a smooth track (this is clearly a big one and sometimes the second person gets it worse than the third and so on), whether you've managed to get some wetness on the skins (sometimes no way to avoid this like in the rain on Sunday, followed by inevitable high heel powder travel), whether you slide your skis or pick them up and put them down with each step, what type of skins, what type of product you put on your skins if any. These all seem to factor in for me. Skin wax has helped a little for me but not always enough, so I'm curious to try out the silicone spray, especially as the months warm up a bit and we get the warm powder days.

I've never had anything but good results using glop stopper, the purple wax from Black Diamond. The key is to put the wax on when the skins are completely dry - if you wait until the skins are already wet and sticking, it's too late. The wax won't stick to wet skins and will be ineffective.