FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Rex Blog: Rolling Out

My name is Chris Hecker and I am a 23-year-old wax technician on the World Cup circuit for Rex Ski Wax. Most of you may think, “Wow! Awesome! It must just be a lot of skiing and seeing a lot of places.” I actually don’t get to ski as much as I would like, and most of my views are the test areas of ski venues and from the inside of a wax cabin. When I am not waxing, testing, eating, or sleeping, I am probably driving past every monument and major city as fast as we can to in order to set up a wax cabin and prep skis for the next set of races. It is a ton of fun but also exhausting, especially when you hop off the plane and immediately get to work.

This year, Rex decided to have me come early to Europe. I hopped off the plane in Helsinki Finland, then got on a train for 9 hours and traveled to Levi, Finland for a R&D camp. Levi is located about 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Usually it snows every day but this year it has been raining and this makes for interesting testing.

We have a long testing to-do list which includes klister, HF Liquids, New Future Fluoro Powders, New Future Fluoro Liquids, etc. Unfortunately, we only have one type of condition at the moment and that is WET! It has been a constant rain/freezing rain drip for the last 5 days. We have to adapt to the conditions and test what we can or try to develop and mix something on the spot in our mobile lab.

Most of the tests we have performed are with new Future Fluoro powders and liquids so I cannot release the results of those tests. However, we have done some testing that I can share the results with everyone. They are listed at the end of the post.

Testing and results can come in many different ways. We will do feeling tests, (where you have one wax on one leg and one wax on the other leg) partner tests, (where me and my partner will lock arms to match speed on a downhill to see which pair is faster) timed test, (where we will produce how much faster or slower a pair is in quantifiable numbers using clocks and magnets). Each test has a different approach and most classic tests are feeling because it is difficult to test a skis grip on a downhill. We have done a lot of testing this week which will lead into the next all to get an understanding of the wax to come for next weekend’s conditions.

We head to Ruka for the first world cup of the season next Wednesday. There will be Classic sprints and Classic distance for the opening weekend which will be interesting if the wet conditions continue.

Until next time,
Chris