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Seeing as how it appears to already be spring here in CA, and I haven't been out in the bc at all yet this season, I figured it was high time for a trip. After much debate, I settled on a destination I've been thinking about for a while now: The Garage.

See, in The Garage lies The Split, which was in serious need of New Skins. There's pretty much only one route into The Garage, called The Stairs. It's is a steep narrow shot with a quick dogleg to the left at the bottom. Here's a view from the top. It's steeper than it looks.



After a harrowing 3 seconds descending The Stairs, I arrived at my destination, The Workbench, where I found The Split ready and waiting.



After a couple seasons dealing with (and swearing at) the Burton factory skins, I finally caved in at the end of last season and bought some BD GlideLight STS skins on end-of-season sale. I've heard good things about them, and I was sure they'd kick ass on the Burton skins. I got the super-wide 130 mm skins. These are about 3/4 inch wider than the Burton skins, but the weight feels similar. Maybe a tad heavier. I got the STS model so that I could 1) have a tail clip, and 2) easily use the same skins with splits of different lengths.

I've been putting off setting up the skins because I knew I was going to require at least a little work (which is pretty much my criteria for putting off anything). The first problem is how to attach the STS tail clip. The Burton skins use little slots notched in the tip and tail of the board halves. The tail notch looked like it could easily be widened. I measured things, and found that extending the notch toward the outside edge of the board would allow the other edge of the skin to line up with the straight split edge of the board, meaning less skin to trim. So, first step, Dremel tool:



... followed by jigsaw



A little cleanup with a file and it was good to go. One nice thing about the tip and tail of the Burton splits. There's just an aluminum metal cap (a lot easier to cut than a hard edge), and the inner material is like the sidewall plastic. No need to seal anything after the cut. Here's the finished notch.



And with the tail clip installed





I set the STS clip in the 4th slot on the plastic strip, with the 165 cm Burton. That way I can shorten it to the first slot for my 162, and lengthen it in the future if I get a longer board. Any excess strip can just hang there, or you can tuck it into the clip itself.



Now for the tip. The skins use a wire tip loop. The tricky thing here is that the tip of the split "ski" is asymmetrical, so it was interesting getting that positioned correctly.







Once that was set, I installed the skin so that it was a few mm inside of the straight split edge. The instructions recommend this so that when you use the trimming tool on the other side, then when you re-center the cut skin it will be just inside both edges. I ended up having to redo this a couple times taking a bit more off.



The trimming tool (like one of those little plastic/razor letter openers) works better if you twist the top part so that it's facing slightly toward the middle of the ski. The pressures the razor against the edge so that you get a closer shave, as it were. Also, cut from tip to tail; the other way goes against the skin hair and doesn't cut as cleanly.



Here's the final trimmed skin. Much more coverage than the old skins!



Tip: be careful when removing the skins, because that glue is sticky and will stick to just about anything (duh!). I was pulling the skin up and off the base, and managed to stick the tail to a low part of the drywall on the ceiling. DOH! Now I have a bit of drywall on the tail. Nice.



Now that I have no more excuses for not doing an actual bc trip, I'm looking forward to seeing how much better these skins perform. Something tells me I'm going to be pleasantly surprised!

nice work on The Stairs, doglegs can be tricky.

Baah,that was gnar! Those stairs gotta be like 45degrees!!

And have you ever stepped on one of those BD hooks,on the skins?? Holyballs,them things hurt!! I'm serious. They could break the skin and cause a very nasty infection.

Good stuff jimw!

You are a true TR junkie.

I know its been a dismal year but where you been man? Hope all is well!

Sick TR brah!



I second that notion. When I ripped my skins off for the first time they went directly into one of my girlfriends stupid houseplants! It is impossible to get those damn leaves out of the brand new glue. The worst part was that she was more concerned about the plant than my precious skins! Women?!?!? :roll:

Well, fortunately I've been down this route before, so I knew what to expect. Otherwise I definitely would have climbed The Stairs first.


That's what I thought too, but on my most recent trip there I decided to get out the inclinometer and see for sure. The ski pole technique for getting an accurate reading really comes in handy here:



As you can see, it's not nearly that steep. This was in the middle of the route though. I swear it's much steeper on the headwall, and it sure is intimidating looking down the entire route from the top. Especially since you can't see around that dogleg.

Another thing to notice is that the angle is in the prime avalanche zone. I shudder to think what it would be like to get bounced down The Stairs in a slide for life.


See, this is the kind of shit we have to resort to this season in CA!


Yeah man, you're telling me it's dismal! I've been out recovering from various injuries. I guess it's been a good year to miss most of... I expect to see more TR's from you and the rest of the CA gang though!

my buddy tom had a terrible ride down the stairs at " jacksons" last night (st. pattys accident)

my buddy tom had a terrible ride down the stairs at " jacksons" last night (st. pattys accident)