Backcountry skiing 10,000 vertical feet in one day requires serious climbing power; thus you’ll want skins with maximum traction. Add 20 miles of distance onto the tour and your skin’s glide becomes as important as traction. Fortunately, you can jerry-rig or purchase skins for all conditions.

Backcountry skiers use climbing skins to ascend slopes. Skins attach to ski bases with adhesive and clip onto the ski tip and tail. Skins have short, oriented hairs that allow the ski to slide in one direction and grip in the other. While skins were once made from real seal skins, most are now synthetic or mohair from Angora goat wool. While mohair has greater glide, synthetic skins are more durable.

Normal Skins
The current trend with skins is wall-to-wall carpeting. This means custom-cutting your skins to cover the base of your skis, leaving just the metal edges exposed. Having full-base coverage allows you to climb steeper slopes and edge on harder surfaces. The argument against full-base skin coverage is that climbing steep skin tracks is a waste of energy – many say the most efficient skin track angle is 12-15 degrees. Another problem with full-base coverage is cost – each time you purchase a new pair of skis you must drop $150-plus for a fresh pair.

Waist-Width Skins
One way to beat the system is purchase skins the width of your skis' waist. For example, to skin-up my sparkling pair of G3 Saints – dimensions: 126 tip / 93 waist / 114 tail centimeters – I purchased a set of 100-millimeter G3 Alpinist Skins. I then used a utility knife (not the flimsy included razor) to shave enough skin off the waist to show the metal edges

Purchasing waist-width skins saves money because narrower skins are cheaper and they’re recyclable to other skis. They also have more glide and are lighter than wall-to-wall carpeting. The disadvantage with waist-width skins is they have less surface area for edging and steep skinning. Have a few seasons of skinning experience before trying waist-width skins.

Skinny Skins
Dig into the depths of your ski box. Under the knee pads and holey gloves you’ll find those straight-cut, 55-mm tele skins from your long-dead Kazama Outbacks. These will make two sets of skinny skins, ideal for mountain tours where track angles are low and weight is an issue.

Using a strong pair of scissors, cut your crusty skins lengthwise down the middle forming two, skinny skins one-inch wide. Since these skins have a small glue-surface area, you’ll want a tail clip. Hack-saw the original tail clip in half to create two skinny tail clips. If they didn’t have a tail clip, then finagle a tail clip from sheet metal and rivets. For the skin tip attachment, use an old D-ring from the original, rubber skin-tips – now probably rotten – or use a new skin tip loop like those from Black Diamond. Skinny skins stretch so you won’t need elastic to get these skins tight.

For short, steep sections or flatter tours, most people prefer skinny skins to kicker skins, which are short skins that fix in the kick zone underfoot. I’ve used skinny skins on Anchorage’s 45-mile, 7,000-vertical foot Portage Icefield traverse and the 38-mile, 7,000-vertical foot Eklutna Traverse, both committing glacial tours. My favorite part of skinny skins is tipping them on edge and zipping down thousands of feet of hardpack.

Edge Skins
The latest rage for reducing weight and improving glide are edge skins. These skins cover the edges of your bases leaving the middle third exposed. Black Diamond is manufacturing the Ascension Nylon Split Skin, which has a webbing strip down the middle. Another option is making your own edge skin by slicing the middle third out of your normal skins or waist-width skins. Home-cut edge skins have incredible glide but they are difficult to put on and remove, especially in the wind.

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