Clip Skins With Lorin Paley

Editors note: We had the fortunate opportunity to have Lorin Paley review some Clip Skins for us.  You may have read our article about Lorin a few months ago: she’s a decorated telemark champ with several titles under her belt including two Junior World Champ Gold, one Junior World Champ Silver, two World Cup Silvers, and two World Cup Bronze.  We also interviewed the man behind the Clip Skins: Kaj Gyr has been perfecting the skins for a while now and has been involved with several useful inventions.

Courtesy of Lorin Paley

The beauty of the Clip Skins is that these are glue-less.  Prying apart your skins and picking off random debris is a thing of the past with these.  Here’s what Lorin has to say…

Clip Skins have made the unpleasantly sticky process of using skins for backcountry skiing easier. I hate folding skins after the climb up and separating them to put them back on my skis. The glue always sticks crookedly at the bottom, requiring me to start over, and the glue residue on my hands, gloves, and skis is a nuisance. Clipskins eliminate all the on-trail fuss by eliminating one ingredient: glue. As the name infers, clips hold the skins in place along the sidewall of the skis, but you have to assemble them at home. The setup requires more time and precision than the preparation of regular glue skins, but the time saved and convenience on the trail is well worth it.

Courtesy of Lorin Paley

Like any project, the first go round takes about twice the time to complete. My first skin took me an hour to assemble, but the second only took 20 minutes. It’s not the time that concerns me about the first skin I attached, but the fit of the skins on the skis. My second skin had a more precise fit than my first attempt. If my entire family needed to be set up, I probably could have cut the preparation time and continued to improve the fit. Here is my technical input for attaching the sidewall clips.

The part that held me up the most on the first skin was taping down the sidewall clips with a good snug fit. By the second skin, I found a method that works more efficiently than the online instruction video. First, I measure the tape that holds the clips in place, as instructed in the video. Then, I placed a clip on the tape for the edge across from me. After the clip is on the tape, I put it back on the ski and stretched the tape toward the opposite edge and positioned the second clip as the video positions the first. I found this method to put more consistent tension in the clips. After two weeks of hard skinning the skins have held up impressively with the final glue showing no signs of weakness. Although my second skin set up is a better fit than my first one, I haven’t found any difference in performance. The design seems to allow for some variation in fit.

Courtesy of Lorin Paley

Other than the downside of an hour and half setup, there isn’t much to be critical about. The skins are custom fit to the one pair of skis that you set them up on, since all skis have different sidecut patterns. Clip Skins might not be ideal for people who get a new pair of backcountry skis every year. After rolling my Clip Skins hair side in to the astonished eyes of my friends, I have no problem settling with using one pair of skis for my skinning adventures.

Courtesy of Lorin Paley

In regards to the feel, Lorin adds:

They were slow like new skins, but just like that, they felt like new skins. There was no snow under the skin when I removed it and the performance was no different. The only difference was that the clips created a bit of drag the one day when it was really wet, new, snow. I would say they were up to spec!

We would like to thank Lorin for writing this article.  We would also like to thank Kaj Gyr for providing us with a pair of Clip Skins.  The Clip Skins can be purchased online.  Ordering will require you to provide the skin width, style of ski, and brand/make of the ski.  Don’t forget to visit Lorin’s blog – find out what this athlete is up to!

What kind of skins do you use? Give us a shout!

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