I spoke with Chris Hall, Fischer Race Director, this morning as he was standing at the Expo area at Telemark.  His exact words were, "bail out, bail out!"  It sounds like the Birkie will not be a "competitive" race and there is serious doubt that they will be able to pull it off safely.  The trail is extremely thin and very icy.  Best of luck to the Birkie organization in this difficult time and thanks for all of your hard work making America's biggest race happen.

There is good snow in Leadville and Steamboat this weekend....  Click here for a detailed Leadville forecast.  It looks like it will be warm Thursday, cool Friday with snow moving in late Friday.  Saturday looks blustery with cloud cover, humidity and snow likely (60% chance) with temps around 15F at race start, warming to 20F by noon, 25F by 2PM.  Snow will stay cold with full cloud cover expected.

Grinds: ZR1 will probably be best early with ZR1XL close and perhaps better toward the finish of the race.  LL26 could be excellent as well with ZR2 probably doing OK at these temperatures, especially if the humidity is as high as predicted. 

No wax recommendations from Swix or Toko yet, so here goes:

Swix: Prepare bases with a layer of Moly, then harden up with 1 or 2 layers of CH4.  Final Layer LF6.  The humidity is predicted to be high, but given the elevation, temperatures and wind, the snow will probably be dry.  HF6 is great in falling snow, but a high fluoro might be risky at these temperatures.  LF6 is the safer bet; HF6 could be great but could also be not so good.  If you have two pairs of skis, go with the LF on the cold grind, HF on a slightly warmer pair.

For kick wax, clean and sand the bases, then apply a layer of Swix Blue (V30) or VR30 and heat into the base.  If you are doing the full marathon, you may want to use VG35 binder thinly applied and heated in.  The race layers will depend on the conditions.  Good candidates will be VR30, V30 (Blue), VR40, and Extra Blue (V40).  Apply thin, smooth layers and cork in completely before applying the next layer.  The number of layers will depend on your skis, but at least 3-4 layers are recommended.

Toko:  Prepare bases with LF Moly then mix LF Moly/LF Blue 1:1.

Skigo: prepare skis with Skigo antistatic graphite, then apply Blue or LF Blue, scrape and brush, dust the ski with C380, melt it in, let it cool for 10-15min and scrape/brush.