Best Practices for Putting Skis Away for the Summer

We start to get asked this time of year about how to put skis away for the summer when it is time. We hope you are still getting plenty of on snow time! If not, here are some tips and suggestions for the proper way to care for and store skis for their summer slumber! 

Skate Skis:

1.     Clean all glide surfaces with a designated glide cleaner. Put glide cleaner on fiber paper or a lint free rag and wipe down the skis. Let the glide cleaner just dry, usually about five minutes, and brush out with a cleaning brush. If your skis are quite dirty, this step will need to be repeated.

2.     Repeat step one until there is limited or no coloring on the cleaning rag.
Sometimes this can be 3-4 cleaning cycles.

3.     Wax with Rode Graphite as a refreshing wax to your bases. This wax is an incredible wax for base health and we like to do a wax of this after glide cleaning skis. Scrape and Brush thoroughly.

4.     Wax with Rode R40 Red, Holmenkol Beta Mix, Swix PS8 or Toko BP Red. Put a slightly thicker than normal wax layer on and iron in. Leave this layer on for the summer. This will help protect skis for the summer. We recommend Red waxes because they are the appropriate hardness to saturate the bases thoroughly but not be incredibly soft like a yellow wax is.

5.     Store lying down in an environment that doesn’t get too warm. Do not store skis upright standing on their tails. Do not store skis in attics or crawl spaces where temperatures can be very hot in the summer.

Classic Skis:

1.     Clean kick wax surfaces completely with kick wax cleaner! This means bases, sidewalls, bindings and top sheets! Make sure there is no sticky stuff left on these surfaces.

2.     Follow instructions for skate skis above.

3.     Leave the kick area dry for the summer or tape over it with blue painters tape.

Skin Skis:

1.     Check the sidewalls and binding areas to make sure they have not picked up sticky kick wax or klister. If so clean thoroughly with kick wax cleaner.

2.     Clean the skins using your favorite skin cleaner. Let dry 10 minutes.

3.     Wax skins with skin wax.

4.     Follow instructions for skate skis above.

Any questions? We are always available for wax questions! Hit up Roger at roger@bouldernordic.com  

Enjoy the rest of your ski season!