What size skins should i get

Either way, keep in mind that skins are the most "consumable" item of your setup, along with boot liners. Don't be afraid to wear them out and replace, that mean you've been getting a lot of skiing in!

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Talk to a shop employee for fit advice, compatibility and more! Womens Tops Bottoms Accessories. Mens Tops Bottoms Accessories. Summer Sale Gear Apparel. Schedule Your Backcountry Appointment Today! Your headline. Add your deal, information or promotional text. Home Backcountry Blog. Previous Next. Choosing the Right Climbing Skin.

Related Blog Posts. Events October 20, 2 min read 5 Comments. Read more. Virtual Boot Fitting: How to take a quality photo of your feet. August 24, 1 min read. Ski Touring August 05, 3 min read. You can enter your sole length in the comment field above the order button at checkout. Read all about mounting ski bindings here.

No, we do not fit snowboard bindings. The risk of a mounted binding being damaged during transport is too high. Also, mounting is easy and you can choose the correct stance right away. Most snowboards are produced with a flip-flop base. This means that the base can have 2 to 4 different colour schemes to prevent material wastage. If you have a preference for a particular colour scheme, you can indicate this in the comment field that comes with your order.

However, we cannot guarantee that we have that specific colour and can deliver it to you. It is important to select the right length and width size of climbing skins to fit your skis and give them a good grip. Some of this variation over time can also be impacted by how and where you store and maintain your skins. For best practices on that, we recommend asking the manufacturer of the skins you use, as best storage practices vary between brands.

Conventional wisdom is that nylon skins hold up better over the long term than mohair skins. Skins with a thicker plush also tend to last longer than those with a thinner plush. Most modern skins have attachment points at the tip and tail of the ski to keep them in place on your skis. The tip and tail hardware is one characteristic of skins that tends to differ the most across different brands — almost every brand uses a different style of hardware, with each having upsides and downsides.

I love being able to roll up my skins and shove them into my coat on the descents. Sometimes, however, suppleness and packability come at the cost of snow being able to more easily pack up under to skins, especially at the tips, since stiffer materials tend to not fold as much and consequently stay flush with the bottom of your ski bases. As with most gear, there are lots of tradeoffs to consider with climbing skins. Climbing skin weight is important, but also very tough to quantify the best way, inconveniently, is to actually get your hands on several different skins.

Pomoca, for example, provides the weight-per-surface-area for their skins, but most other manufacturers do not provide this info. Most skins come with some variety of a razor blade or plastic letter-opener-type device that you can use when cutting skins to the shape of your skis. One very important variable that affects glide, grip, and glue and maybe durability? In my experience, really wide skis with edge-to-edge skins generally grip better than a narrower ski with the same skins.

On the flip side, wider skis also seem to generate more friction, consequently decreasing glide efficiency. This is all pretty intuitive, given that a larger ski and therefore, larger skin creates more surface area that contacts the snow.

I do tend to favor lower-angle skin tracks but still encounter steep, icy tracks on occasion. The only skins that I had slipping issues with were the Pomoca Race Pro 2.

I was also using them on a day with a small amount of soft, light snow that was blown on a firm skin track, which is always tricky. Luke Koppa : I have used the Race Pro 2. For comparison, I grabbed a few varieties of nylon skins that I had laying around from Black Diamond and G3 and the difference in friction between the two is notable.

Luke : Yep, I agree. I was able to rip them without taking off my skis, but even after laps in a day often sticking the skins to wet ski bases , they never fell off. But at this point, they are now very manageable in this regard. I have had the two most well-used pairs of the Black Diamond UltraLite Mix fall off my skis during cold winter days, but they were salvageable.

I almost always ski down with my skins in an interior jacket pocket or otherwise against my base layers to warm them on the way down and highly recommend this strategy, especially for cold days, to preserve the stickiness of the adhesive. After about 3 days of use, it has loosened up enough for me to rip skins with skis on and it seems to stay on my skis quite well.

I need more time on them to gauge the long-term performance of the glue, but it seems at least on par with the Black Diamond Glue. None of the skins listed here have any issues with leaving glue residue on skis, something I experienced a lot with some older Black Diamond and G3 skins in particular.

Contour Hybrid: even easier to rip than Pomoca, maybe a touch less secure, but very versatile overall. Black Diamond: Quite sticky, still pretty easy to rip, but stickiness seems to deteriorate after multiple seasons. Paul : Most people have concluded that nylon plush tends to be more durable than mohair plush. Water resistance is another important durability variable. They all have excellent water resistance when new and have gradually trended toward soaking up more water the longer I use them.

Hardware durability is another matter. The tip pieces seem just about indestructible and are quite simple and robust in design. The Pomoca tails feature a stretchy rubber piece with a fairly thick plastic clip. The UltraLite Mix skins mentioned here are the exception, which save weight by utilizing a Dyneema cord to connect the tip bar. What usually happens is that the Dyneema cord pulls free from the plastic tip piece. The rubberized tail straps on the Black Diamond skins used to crack and break quite often after heavy use, but it seems like Black Diamond has changed the material slightly so that they are now more durable.

The tail system features a simple camming system that slides on a piece of strong, rubberized material. Unfortunately, on my third day using the Minimist skins, the cam device for the tail somehow fell apart.

On my last run of the day, I was able to just skin up without the tail hook, but especially if the glue loses tackiness over time, I would prefer the security of having a tail hook. I am unimpressed by how easily the G3 Minimist system fell apart after minimal use, though G3 did say that this issue should be resolved with the currently available Minimist skins our pair was one of the first batches and it would definitely be covered under their warranty.

But, as usual, the lighter and more minimal you go, you typically tend to sacrifice some durability. The Black Diamond UltraLite system also works quite well. The tip fits a wide variety of skis but has the durability concerns mentioned above. I prefer to use the tail hook in a slightly different manner than intended, wherein I snap them in place so that the rubbery part is sandwiched between the ski and the metal hook. Women's Shoe Size 4. Shop By Skier Weight: Over lbs lbs lbs lbs lbs lbs Under 75 lbs.

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