Reliable skins become more important the further you venture form the trailhead.
After market hardware options to make tip-rip skins more reliable and functional.
As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about and tinkering with gear, climbing skins have often been a focus of my tinkering attention. From DIY tip notches, brand specific attachments, and various plush and glue varieties, the customization options for skins are endless. We ask much of our skins and their attachment hardware—basically, they need to be securely attached, grip well, glide well, and be durable. On a more nuanced level, we start to think about lightweight, packability, and ease of application/removal. Fast and easy removal with minimal acrobatics is a desire that leads many of us to bungee cords and tip notches—skimo style. The availability of skin plush by the cm, as well as a plethora of hardware options over at Skimo.co has opened up the world of make-your-own skin on this side of the pond.
The skimo.co skin part gold mine
While testing various skis over the past few years, I’ve mainly used ski manufacturers’ provided skins or Pomoca skins with their standard wire loop/rubber strap attachments. Often, these various skins and attachments work just fine, but when I find a pair of skis that I really enjoy and want to hold on to for a few seasons, I start to tinker and optimize. This tinkering often meant getting out the Dremel tool and cutting notches into my tips, which works great but generally looks a bit sloppy and opens up the ski to delamination and water damage in the freshly exposed areas. With “tip edge” skis (edge material all the way around the tip), this gets even more risky as you pose a risk of hooking up and ripping out the end of the edge from your once robust ski tip. Enter the Ski Trab Attivo skin tips—I first considered these as a suggestion from the folks at skimo.co as replacement hardware for the Blizzard factory skin tips—with the added benefit of tip rip-ability. Blizzard Zero G skis have a similar detent to Ski Trab’s skis that holds the springy metal clip in place nearly perfectly; however, with some testing on various other skis, I’ve found that the clips don’t need any special shape to hold pretty well, although a somewhat square tip shape helps things stay put. The only downside I’ve found relative to a tip notch/bungee system is the lack of adjustability—it’s pretty simple to move the knot or add a knot on a bungee to snug things up as a skin stretches/wears over time—not so much with the Ski Trab tips.
Almost as sleek as the proprietary Blizzard attachment, and much more functional.
The low profile attachment leaves little room for snow ingress or dragging
Ready to rip, I haven't broken a vinyl tab yet, but it seems possible. Luckily, it would be a nuisance rather than a day ender.
Tail clips are perhaps the most challenging piece of the puzzle when building skins with the Ski Trab tips. With bungee tips, I often opt for the fixed rivet-on tail hooks to add a bit of security to the attachment. Unfortunately, with no adjustability in front, this doesn’t allow any margin to snug/loosen things up to get a perfect fit. I’ve used the Pomoca rubber straps, but these feel like an inelegant pairing to svelte the Ski Trab tips.
The elegant ski Trab Tail attachment, this plastic fin presses into the swallow tail on their skis.
My go to tail hooks - secure and low profile, but lacking any length adjustment. This works great for bungee race tips but not so much with the Ski Trab tips.
Perhaps this nugget isn’t a game changer, but these small optimizations bring me some small piece of joy and satisfaction every time I’m out using them. I hope this will inspire a few more folks to experience the joys of tip-rip skins.
