Collection: Orange Snow Conditions (New, Glazing Snow, +5°C to -5°C)

Orange conditions occur when freshly falling snow or new snow is humid enough to be packing snow. This type of snow is perfect for making a snowman or a snowball fight! The natural snow crystal structure is still present - you can still pick up snow from the ground and still find relatively unbroken snowflakes. However, when this type of snow is skied over, its high-humidity causes it to pack and glaze. This is a very tricky condition for waxing. On one hand, snow crystals can still be sharp if there hasn’t been heavy traffic on the trails presenting you with a level of kinetic friction. But as the tracks get skied in they tend to glaze, meaning kinetic friction is less of an issue. High humidity causes a suction component (wet friction) to always be a consideration in orange conditions.

Friction Characteristics: Because orange conditions usually occur when the snow is actively evolving from fresh, powdery blue conditions to wet, slushy yellow conditions, orange conditions occur at a crossroads of friction types. Kinetic friction is an issue when the trails have not been skied in much. But since the snowflakes are not too cold, they tend to melt when skied over rather than cut into your ski base making it a lower priority. Generally, orange waxes are quite soft for this reason. Fluorinated waxes are fantastic in snow like this because the HF or LF compounds help repel water. Glazing that occurs will act to seal water on top of the snowpack where it interacts with your ski. Aggressive rills are often needed in snow like this.

Kick Waxing: Usually, the advice for getting kick in this type of snow is to resort to rub skis, skins, or fish scales. But when that’s not possible and you need to use wax, you have a few options. Depending on the level of glazing in the tracks, klister or hardwax can work, but usually, a klister-cover is the way to go. If there is very little glazing, use a hardwax. It will be faster and won’t ice up as quickly. If there is glazing happening, use klister since it will stick to the icy sheen. More often than not, there is a variety of glazed sections and powdery sections on the trails. This means taking advantage of both hardwaxes and klisters will give your grip wax good kick and glide on any part of the course. Klister-cover is where you start with a thin layer of klister and cover it was a hard hardwax (usually a hardwax that’s a step colder than the temperature). The klister gives you grip, and the hardwax prevents icing.