too slow on wet snow

[Coloradoking]

swix LF10 for hot, wet conditions.

swix glacier wax for mt. hood

and you guessed it: swix CH6 for everyday riding.

:ices_angeSWIX:ices_ange

[felix]

Well if you wanna stick with Swix, you take HF10B in Yellow for old wet snow or HF10BDB (Black Devil) for fresh wet snow or wet machine snow - both race waxes with high-fluor concentration for very wet snow - but better not order before looking at the price (list price around €150/€170 for 180g). (For Swix HF = High Fluor, LF = Low Fluor and cheaper, but still better than No Fluor.....)

Brands really tell nothing, nearly any brand has from cheap waxes over training waxes to race waxes everything on offer. Exceptions are maybe small companies such as Zipps (fluid waxes) or Solda who focus mainly on racing supply and from which the average crowd would already ask how training waxes can come so expensive. Big brands like Holmenkol, Toko or Swix are (at least in Austria) genrally lower value for price from what I have experienced.

Very good value are often the snowboard wax offsprings from the big names. Often, especially at the end of season, you can get low-fluor waxes identical to their flagship brands at way lower prices. Otherwise if you buy assortements of 1kg blocks, prices are much lower too but I prefer not storing waxes for too long so about 100g of each graphite/hydrocarbon/low fluor wax gets me easily through one season (including waxing my families skis/boards).

[Coloradoking]

at the beginning of each season; my team holds an equipment night with a whole bunch of ridiculous deals on high quality equipment and accessories. one of those, includes swix. we get like 50% off, and i burn through the 60g packs of basically every kind of their wax every other year so i can just restock there and i spend wayyyyy less :D

GO EMSC (eldora mountain snowboard club)

[NateW]

Today I did some A/B testing with Hertel Hot Sauce (thanks for the sample Randy!) and One Ball Jay Summer Slush wax (thanks for the tip boardski!).

I put fresh wax on two boars last night, scraped and brushed. I took a few runs on my Donek AX with the Hertel wax and while most of the mountain was pretty fast (much faster than I expected given the high temps and clear skies), there were some definite slow spots, particularly in an un-groomed area that I pass through on every run (the face between the upper and lower terrain parks at Summit Central, for you locals). This area gave the "brakes on" feeling I referred to in my first post above.

Then switched to my Donek FC, with the OBJ wax, and did the same runs. Mostly it felt pretty similar, maybe a tad faster but not significantly, however in the ungroomed section, the "brakes" sensation was pretty much gone. I took a few runs to confirm. Occasionally I could feel just a slight hint of braking, but mostly that ungroomed section felt just as fast as regular snow.

I switched back to my Hertel-waxed AX again to double-check / confirm that it was the wax and not just changing snow conditions, and the ungroomed stuff still felt really slow. The brakes were still on.

The AX has a slightly more ungroomed-friendly nose, is .5cm narrower, and has a base that is structured for wet snow. All of that should have been to its advantage today - if it had been the faster board I would need to try again with the waxes reversed. But the OBJ-waxed FC did much better in spite of its minimal structure and flatter nose. The FC is a few cm longer (180 vs 172 for the AX) but the improvement was way more than the few percent that difference alone might account for. The boards have almost identical flex.

So I declare One Ball Jay the winner, by a large margin. Plus it smells really nice, like fruits or berries or something. My girlfriend said it smelled like I was making pie. :) I find it strange that OBJ is targeting the same people who buy scented candles, but I'm OK with that.

I'll order some of the other suggested waxes and try them out next spring.

[skiracerx]

Hi, I ski southern PA. It can go from 20 and shade to 45 sunny in the same 4 hrs. I have used notwax for years.

The rub on works but when you hot wax a layer of notwax first, then hot wax top off after structure, X cross hatch works in the spring. Your trying to break the suction effect of the extra water. Also try and hotwax, and prep with Super Z or other cleaner. gets rid of gunk, pollen, dirt etc for the last week or two of the season.

now Zardoz has their own Flouro+ wax. you can rub and buff on, or hot wax. It has Notwax in it and select flouro.

here is a link to my test reports.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeqi4ur/Zardoz_Fluoro_testing_Draft1ZR.pdf

If your older and do not like the back breaking chore of scraping off wax, Zardoz Fluoro+ comes off easy. I typically wax one once a week for 10 to 12 weeks.

A group of us tested it over a yr. from 10 degrees F to 50 Degrees F , 40 to 80% humidity. Snow is mostly man made. abrasive.