Alps Mountaineering Red Tail 65 Pack Review

[Tinisha]

PaulForward: Boots, bindings, and skis for ski touring have taken a technological quantum leap over the last 10-20 years and I get as excited as anyone over light, reliable, high-performance backcountry gear.

When sliding forward, some materials create less resistance than others because of the same variables mentioned above in the Grip section. Generally, the better the grip, the worse the glide, and vice versa.

Not only does improved glide help you skin across flatter terrain with less effort and more speed, but at least in my experience, it can also help on steeper ascents because it allows you to use more efficient technique by keeping your skis (and skins) on the snow while pushing them forward. I still see plenty of people in the backcountry picking their skis off the snow when they slide them forward. I suspect some of them would be able to break this habit with better-gliding skins, and consequently find themselves moving more efficiently through the backcountry.

In my experience, really wide skis with edge-to-edge skins generally grip better than a narrower ski with the same skins. On the flip side, wider skis also seem to generate more friction, consequently decreasing glide efficiency. This is all pretty intuitive, given that a larger ski (and therefore, larger skin) creates more surface area that contacts the snow. Because of this, I think the benefits of high-glide / lower-grip skins increase as the ski width increases.

The only skins that I had slipping issues with were the Pomoca Race Pro 2.0 but I blame a lot of that on the fact that I was using 100mm-wide, straight-cut skins on a pair of the 105mm-wide Blizzard Zero G 105, which equated to quite a bit of base exposed at the tips and tails. I was also using them on a day with a small amount of soft, light snow that was blown on a firm skin track, which is always tricky.

The rubberized tail straps on the Black Diamond skins used to crack and break quite often after heavy use, but it seems like Black Diamond has changed the material slightly so that they are now more durable.

The Black Diamond UltraLite system also works quite well. The tip fits a wide variety of skis but has the durability concerns mentioned above. I prefer to use the tail hook in a slightly different manner than intended, wherein I snap them in place so that the rubbery part is sandwiched between the ski and the metal hook. I find that this is more secure, especially for more rounded tail shapes.

While, for the reasons we noted above, skin weight is difficult to quantify, the Pomoca Free Pro 2.0, Pomoca Race Pro 2.0, and Black Diamond UltraLite Mix seem to be the lightest of the skins here. The other mohair / nylon mix skins seem fairly similar to each other in terms of weight, and the full nylon Black Diamond Ascension and G3 Alpinist+ Universal are the heaviest.

Poor tip and tail hardware can certainly ruin a nice skin. I had to replace my Coltex tail attachment with the G3 aftermarket tails. The original tail clip kept sliding off my twin tip skis. Thankfully the modification has been bombproof since.

Question seems a bit dubious. Ski crampons are not used without skins, nor are they slower (well I guess if you rip skins when you put on your ski crampons, that certainly will be slower). My point is that grippier skins are not substitutes for ski or boot crampons in any scenario, nor vice versa.

Detailed review!

Like my Pomoca Climb Skins that I got late last year much more than my previous BD. I did break the plastic tail clip on a very cold day that I tried to force over the tail. Presumably mostly or all user error.

If you run a pair of Pomocas long enough the plastic bits (both the tail clip and the tip loop connector) will break. I promise. The plastic becomes brittle eventually and on a cold enough day it will crack.

trying to get g3 to address this problem has also been an adventure. Their responses are slow (3weeks) and nobody can move my claim forward. The warranty claims dept. was able to help my buddy but for some reason after chasing them down for a month I need to start over with the retailer.

My new pomoca pro s glide skins are not gliding very well. The seller told me I need 5 days on them for them to work efficiently. Is this true ? are they factory waxed? should I run a hot iron over them to get them activated? Disappointed.

I use Pomoca Free Pro 2.0 skins on my Zero G 95 skis, mostly used for spring and summer volcano skiing and Free Pro 2.0 CF for my wide winter skis. After about 30+ days on my Free Pro 2.0 skins (last spring and summer), with skiing over short stretches of talus and plants, the skins are super efficient on glide, certainly good enough on grip, and hold up fine. The adhesive is perfect and easy to pull apart, the skins are light-weight, and do not take on much water, given the warm summer condition and water content of the slushy corn snow.

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