Also re: skintracks, yes skintracks around jackson are notoriously steep. Crazy rando geeks around here like to go straight up, and i usually just claw my way up stuff rather than set a new track. In addition, there are a few canyons in the alpine around here with big steep headwalls. You need to claw your way up these to get to all the upper canyon lines. If the snow is hard or wind scoured it can be gnarly skinning with serious slide for life for a few hundred feet kinda conditions. If i am traversing across one of those zones i want every bit of carpet i can get. Especially on the edge. the large majority og the pressure on the skin is along the edge when you are actually skinning. As such i dont want that whole inner edge to be bare of skin. If you try and engage the edge into a steep enough sidehill, you will get the baseless area in contact with the snow and you can feel the slip. On my old cambered split with 130 skinns i could feel it sometimes, and those skins had pretty good coverage. The new prospector has a fat taper profile on it and the 130 mm skins leave too much base exposed at the edge for my taste.

Well, i ended up just buying a set of 140 ascension nylons. I was all hot on the glidelite, but the guy at the store convinced me that with rocker, steep skin tracks, and dry coarse snow nylon was the answer. In my experience thru 9 winters if using the nylons, he was correct, and it was hard to argue. The glidelites weighed 1/2 lb less, packed doen half the size and looked slightly less goofy with their grey and black print, but they dont grip as well and they are not as durable, and they cost more.

I of course ran into issues doing the mod from ski to split, but it came out decent. First, black diamonds sts is pretty sweet. The rat tail is on the same plane as the skin sandwiched between 2 metal plates. The straps are easily swtichable if you break one with no reriviting, and there is zero bulk at the attachment point. Problem is, bd preinstalls the tails, and cuts 45 degree slices off the corner. Looks like it works good for skis but for my split, i wanted to match the taper. the skin is super long so i cut about the last foot off the end of the skin with the tail attachment. Ill have to drill the rivits out and reinstall it to get it to work wit the spark tail clips. I used a voile skin get the approximate taper angle of the tip clip. The black diamond tip clip is adjustable width wise, but i needed it in the smallest setting, getting the outer loop clip off was tough, but i was able to reset the tip clip to be about the size of a voile. Problem is the black diamond clip is kind of thick and bulky. It looks like it has potential to pack snow between the base and the skin at the front point also because it doesnt lay the skin against the base. The voile tip clips make the skin a bit more trim at the tip. I called voile to see if you could buy their tip clip and they dont sell them, so im forced to work with what i have.

Overall, it feels pretty stupid that i have to resort to diy modding ski skins because of a lack of any wider skin options for splits. We have seen an explosion in the number of splits available, yet we have the same tired skin options…..short and skinny 130mm from voile that climbs great but dont glide for crap, or g3 which has a slightly ghetto rigged ski tip and tail system and suspect glue. On top of that, only g3 offers a 140mm split skin…only one company makes a skin wide enough to fit wider or tapered board or to give wall to wall coverage. Funny, cause i dont see snowboards getting any skinnier lately. If anything, things are getting wider, more tapered, huge noses. We all understand the virtues of wall to wall coverage and why skins for splits arent 120mm… Cause exposed edge sucks. So why arent there any other options on the market? Only way to get around it now is to mcgyver ski skins to work, and thats really not that sweet cause most ski skin attachments suck for splits. Add to that you cant even buy anything like a voile style tip loop and your pretty much sol. 2014 and we are still forced to diy and mod ski gear. Doesnt seem that much progress from 10 years ago. That sucks. Split companies, are u listening? Cause theres 100 new splits out on the market and not enough skin options to work on all of em unless you want to make sacrifices.