Tag Archives: Hok

The new climbing wire for our custom heel pieces.

Climbing wire for the AS Hok heel pieces

  Many of you 3pin users may have wondered what those 3 sets of holes were in the base of the heel pieces. Well, our new climbing wire is done and just happens to fit in those holes…..We finished the wire design late last season and did our initial testing in the spring and early summer. We will test it a bit more to confirm the design again and then be offering them on our website.   Following our overall design concept, we tried to keep these simple, sturdy, and easy to use. As with the heel pieces, the climbing wire is designed to fit a range of boot sizes. We have tested the wires with a size 5.5 women’s boot (see picture) up through a men’s 13. There are 6 possible location settings with 3 sets of holes on the heel pieces and the 2 locations for the heel pieces on the Hok (3 inserts for  the 2 holes). Unlike a lot of climbing wires, the design is easy to use and relies on gravity, sitting  on top of the heel piece when engaged rather then depending on a spring or indents to hold it up and place. We find these systems to be finicky and hard to put up and down.               The wire is spring steel and stainless. Cost for a set of wires will be $9.75.

Keith Wakefield

Single Poles for 2012-13 season

I have become so enamored of skishoeing with the Hoks and a single pole that we will sell them this year on the website. A few of us have been out scouting and cutting this summer already (see pics) and are getting quite the stockpile. Lodgepole  pine is the wood of choice, very strong and supple. There are lodgepole thickets high the mountains around here where altitude, rocky soil, and tight stands conspire to keep growth rates incredibly low. I just measure a lodgepole less then 1.5 inches in diameter and it is just about 50 years old (hard to count the rings they are so tight)!   I have experimented with size and length this year and have decided that 12-16 inches taller then your height is a good length. Once seasoned they will be peeled and prepped for use. The poles will be finished with a penetrating oil and have a cord through the handle end. The base end will have a wedge cut in, handy for scraping snow off the top of skis. We are also having a small ‘AS’ brand made that will go on the handle as well. Like the Hoks the Tiaks (tīăk – the Altai word for their single poles) will be simple, durable, and easy to use. They will look great too!     Why a single pole? Traditionally the ski poles we use for both nordic and downhill have several uses, on nordic skis the main one would be propulsion. With a smooth based ski you can get a lot of glide with a well executed pole push, and when climbing your poles can reduce your back sliding. On nordic skis the effective push is reduced when breaking trail in deep snow and in these conditions many skiers revert to using their poles for balance, problematic because with two poles you are constantly throwing your weight from side to side.  Using two poles effectively is not intuitive, and I have spent days trying to teach both nordic and downhill skiers effective poling.   Downhill skiing uses poles a bit differently. The poles are shorter and are used primarily as a timing device for turns and as a way to position and move our bodies (our center of balance) down the hill into the next turn. As a lesser use, since we are on skis with zero grip we also use them to gamely try and push ourselves around as best we can.     At the point you put a climbing skin on the ski you reduce free gliding enough to make the pole push more of an energy  draw then gain, and with the climbing skin back slipping is much less of an issue. But the biggest advantage of the single pole is its ability to form a tripod with the pole and your two skis. Tripods are inherently stable in a simple intuitive way, and when one of the legs is moved (the pole), very adaptable to uneven ground. The use of a pole puts the skishoer’s center of balance a bit back on the downhill, creating a really stable position in a wide variety of snow conditions. The Hoks are short (particularly the 125), a great plus for maneuverability and turning but the disadvantage of a short ski is less stability fore and aft. The single pole quickly eliminates this problem.       Of special note is the use of the single pole on downhills. Despite seeing modern telemark skiers switch the pole from side to side as they make turns down the hill, the single pole is not moved from side to side while turning and is kept on the favored side on a downhill run, with the end of the pole drifting from side to side behind you, providing the balance where its needed at any given moment. The only time I found it useful to switch sides is on a steep sidehill, where the pole support up hill is excellent for a stabilizing a steep traverse. There are many other uses I have come up with for the single pole. It’s great for clearing branches of snow when moving through the forest. It’s great for breaking low branches too – perhaps on your favorite ski run. It’s a great probe….   I will write more on this later. Suffice to say, I am looking forward to a great winter of skishoeing (Hoking!) and the pleasures of a single pole.    

Welcome to Altai Skis

Altai Skis was conceived by Nils Larsen and Francois Sylvain in 2009.   We both have had extensive ski industry experience and had worked together designing nordic and backcountry skis for over ten years. We felt there was a great potential for skis designed for what we like to call ‘pocket backcountry’, the skiing many skiers have ready access to close to where they live. In both Quebec (Francois’ home) and NE Washington (Nils’ home), skiing out the back door or close to it offers us great and easy access to the winter world. We set to work on new designs, with the goal to create easy to use and accessible gear to match the often overlooked skiing terrain hiding in plain view.   Nils has been working on a documentary project on indigenous skiers in the remote Altai Mountains of Northern Asia since 2005. The ski traditions in the area date back thousands of years, possibly to the origins of skiing. The skiers in the Altai still use one ski design for all their skiing, whether it’s a short trip to feed their livestock, over the hill to visit a neighbor, or a two week hunting expedition deep into the rugged mountains. All skiing in the Altai is ‘backcountry’. This was the inspiration for Altai Skis, it defines the spirit of our company and it will drive our designs into the future.