Building Your best Boulder

Ski Bounding with Coach Rick and Mia

In our first installment of Building Your Best Boulder, Rick Kapala—three-time USSA Coach of the Year and board member for both the U.S. Ski Team and the Boulder Mountain Tour—teams up with SVSEF Gold Team’s Mia Case to break down the art of ski bounding.

Sincere thanks to our Title Sponsor, Zions Bank, and our Platinum Sponsors —Backwoods Mountain Sports, Blaine County Recreation District, Challenged Athletes Foundation, Elephant’s Perch, Mission 43, Salomon, and Zenergy — for their incredible support of the Boulder Mountain Tour.

EnjoyWinter
Welcome to EnjoyWinter, the brands of Nordic! We are America's largest independent distributor of cross-country ski equipment. Each of the 20+ brands we import specialize in one product category. Let us help you glide through winter!
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SAUCE
Our passion is creating beautiful, high quality and thoughtful products that help people maintain healthy lifestyles. We are fortunate to be headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, where we can field test products throughout the year. Many of our products boast unique features specifically designed for athletic endeavors. Fit and function are as important as a variety of attractive patterns and color options, with original prints embodying our ‘Saucy’ sophisticated style.
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Wood River Land Trust
Since 1994, the Land Trust has been a growing and dynamic presence in the Wood River Valley, preserving and protecting the Big Wood River, its tributaries, and the treasured landscapes of central Idaho. Working with a visionary community, we have preserved nearly 27,000 acres, created 16 open preserves and 41 conservation easements. Together, we have celebrated places like the Hailey Greenway, Boxcar Bend, and Howard Preserve, where people can experience healthy activity, pristine waters and a sense of wonder. With local families we have protected thousands of acres of working lands that conserve critical habitat for wildlife, preserve scenic views of our Valley, and contribute to our agricultural economy.
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TOKO
We have Toko Tech Team members in Ketchum who will be monitoring the conditions and testing. Additionally I will be in Ketchum and will test Thursday and again on Friday morning before coming to the expo. I'll be at the expo approximately from noon to close to talk about the wax recommendation, say hello, and answer any questions anyone might have. We have done our best to stock the local ski shops with what we expect will be the wax of the day, but this is never a sure thing and often the stores sell out. The current forecast shows overnight lows of around 15f and daytime highs of 38f until Thursday. Then Thursday night a low of 21 and high Friday of 35 with maybe a bit of weather Friday. They are currently forecasting 1.5 inches of snow Friday night with a low of 27f and then a high of 38f Saturday with maybe more precip or maybe it will have passed by then. In the last two hours, the forecast has changed and the incoming weather has changed to earlier. Two days ago, they were saying it wouldn't arrive until Saturday night and Sunday. For this reason, we are going to wait until Thursday morning to make our BMT race wax tip call. We don't want people waxing early and arriving in Ketchum with the completely wrong wax and no means of correcting it. It does look as though our base layers will be BP hot wax Red followed by HP hot wax Red for race day. Despite the forecasted air temperatures and precipitation, I am very reluctant to recommend mixing in Yellow as the BMT snow is notably dry and when there is precipitation, so often it falls dry or even in the form of graupel which acts super dry but most commonly falls at around 32-35f. We have to wait for the forecast to get more reliable before recommending HPLP or not or maybe adding Yellow to the Red hot wax. If it snows Saturday morning and then continues to snow during the race such that there is a hard base of snow with 1-2 inches of ungroomed snow on top, my recommendation is to go with a pair of skis that has a higher stiffer camber. Skis tend to run far better in such conditions when there is less contact of the snow on the base and this is the way to accomplish that. If these are the conditions, I expect flex of the skis (higher stiffer camber) to be the most important factor affecting ski speed. If it snows Friday and Friday evening and then they are able to groom the course overnight and in the morning such that the snow is set up and hard like it will be most of the week (but with more moisture in the air and snow), then "normal" skis will be great. See you at the expo and please look for our race wax recommendation on Thursday morning at around 10mst
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