How to Choose Cross-Country Skis

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Will from the Outspokin Bicycle and Sport Shop located in Newbury, New Hampshire. Today we're going to talk a little bit about how to choose a cross-country ski. There's a lot of choices out there nowadays; we're going to try to narrow it down to just a few for you. Basically cross-country skiing it's a lot of people is just kicking around the, in the backwoods; maybe occasionally getting on a groomed trail, hit some snowmobile trails; for that, your basic ski which is what everybody thinks of as a cross-country ski, nice and long, fairly narrow. Usually the least expensive of the cross-country ski is kind of, you can buy it in a package deal; you're just going to use it a few times that's plenty of ski for you. Then if you're going to get a little more serious about it and you really have a lot of opportunity to ski maybe in some rougher terrain or in some ungroomed terrain, something that is new is coming out nowadays and becoming out very popular is a little wider; but you gain a little more control and a flotation. So, you know, if you're going to be out beating around; you want to use a snowshoe that kind of want that same concept, you go for little wider ski; definitely becoming very very popular around our neck of woods in New Hampshire. And then of course you have more of a racing ski; this are generally much shorter, much thicker under foot, very specific to a different style of skiing which is a very aggressive skating style. It's all about glide as you don't have any grip or underneath here under foot; it's all just about glide as most of your propulsion is done by doing kind of a skate motion. So these are all about agility and speed and a complete different build. Not quite as popular, more popular, the most popular. And once again, they're all you know, fitted by weight. So this ski is obviously built differently; but all these skis would support the same type of skier; so shorter, medium, tall. And that's how you choose a cross-country ski."