Hi, I'm Andrew McClain. We're here in the Wasatch to talk about the basic element of
backcountry skiing, skinning. One of the key elements of skinning efficiency and speed is to
get as long a stride as possible and that has everything to do with the amount of cup rotation
your boot has and you want your upper cuff to float so you want to obviously make sure you
are in tour mode. I have my buckles done as loose as possible these top two and I also take off my
power strap just because it gives you much more range so if your boot doesn't flex you only can
take these little Frankenstein steps but if you can stride out you get another four or five six
inches per stride and that's what really adds up over a long day of touring. The skinning looks
a lot like walking but there's a major difference you want to slide your skis along not lift them
so instead of taking a step every inch of the way you want to be a slacker and just kind of drag
your skis just barely lift them as little as possible. The idea with skinning on a contour like this is
that you want to roll your skis and have good contact with your skin on the snow try to avoid
staying off your edges too much so you set and then roll set roll set roll. Heel risers or heel lift
is very important to backcountry skiing because it helps your legs stay fresh so you're not high
healed or low healed all the time so you want to adjust your heel pegs your heel risers on your
bindings but you don't want to be adjusting them every 10 feet so when you look up the slope ahead
of you you kind of want to pick what the overall average of the slope would be so I'm going to go
in my middle peg for this. Now we're getting into steeper terrain and steeper skinning is a
discipline all into itself. For steeper skinning I like shorter poles so I shorten them up by
just a couple of inches slide it down lock it in and that allows me to get over the top of
my poles and push with my upper body and my chest. When you get into steeper slopes skinning becomes
much more exacting and what you want to do is keep your weight on the skins where you can pressure
it. If you're leaning forward like this bending at your waist you can't pressure your tips because
the ski you just can't put any pressure on it because of the touring binding. So what you want
to do stand up straight keep your back straight don't break at the waist push through your heels
and try to concentrate on just getting this part of the skin right in front of your binding all
the way to the tail that's where your grip pocket is. Get a good base set your poles wide apart facing
uphill step in establish another good base lean forward bring your ski around. So kick turns are
one of the basic building blocks of skinning the best way to learn them is to do a few hundred
thousand if not a million of them. There's no real secret to going downhill with your skins on
aside from getting ready for it and holding on. So remember there's no such thing as a bad skin
track only a bad skinner. So remember you got to go up before you go down. So remember if you're
in it to win it you've got to skin it. That's all I got.
