Ski Tuning and Services

For the best performance and safety, we recommend a full tune every 5 to 10 days on the snow. However, this depends on the conditions; if you are skiing on man-made or hard pack snow, your edges will dull and your wax will wear off much faster than in soft powder. A good rule of thumb is to bring them in whenever you feel a lack of grip on hardpack or if your bases start to look "hairy" or gray.

Yes. While most equipment comes with a "factory tune," it is often a generic setting. Additionally, skis can settle or slightly warp during shipping and storage. We ecommend bringing new gear in for a "New Ski/Board Prep" to ensure the bases are perfectly flat, the edges are set to your specific style, and the base is deeply saturated with wax.

A traditional hand wax uses a hot iron to melt wax onto the surface. Our Wintersteiger Wax Future uses infrared light to heat the base without contact. This allows the pores of the base to open wider and absorb wax much deeper into the material. The result is a faster glide that lasts significantly longer than a standard iron-on wax.

That "chalky" or "ashy" look is a sign of base oxidation. It means your base is dry and has lost its lubrication. When a base stays dry for too long, it can become brittle and lose its ability to hold wax. Regular waxing keeps the base "hydrated," protected, and fast.

While you can do basic "touch-ups" with a gummy stone to remove burrs, achieving a precise, consistent edge angle is difficult to do by hand. Our Trim Jet Racing and Jupiter machines use ceramic disc technology to sharpen edges to within a fraction of a degree. This precision provides a level of "bite" on ice that simply can't be matched by hand-filing.

If you hit a rock and see a scratch that reveals the wood or metal inside the ski (rather than just the black P-Tex base), that is a core shot. It is urgent to get these repaired immediately. If water gets into the core, it can cause the wood to rot or the layers to delaminate, which can permanently ruin your equipment.

In the Lake Tahoe area, our snow often has high moisture content, famously known as
"Sierra Cement." This heavy, wet snow creates significant suction between your base and the snow. To combat this, we use the Wintersteiger Jupiter to grind a specific base structure (a pattern of tiny grooves) into your gear. This structure acts like a tire tread, breaking the surface tension and allowing you to glide freely instead of feeling "stuck" in the slush.

Tahoe temperatures can fluctuate wildly-from a frozen morning at the summit to 40°F slush at the base by noon. Because of this, a standard "all-temp" wax often fails. We use infrared waxing to saturate the base with temperature-specific waxes that handle high-moisture snow. If the forecast calls for a classic Tahoe spring day, we can apply a "warm" wax with high water-repellency to keep you from slowing down in the flats.

Early in the season or during dry spells, resorts rely heavily on man-made snow. Man-made snow is essentially tiny pellets of ice, which are much more abrasive than natural snowflakes. This "sandpapers" your edges and dries out your bases quickly. If you’re riding mostly man-made snow, we recommend a Ceramic Disc Finish on our Trim Jet Racing model every 4–5 days to maintain that essential "bite" on the ice.

Yes! "Sticky" snow is caused by a combination of suction (too much water) and dirt/pollen that accumulates in the snowpack during the spring. Our professional tunes include a base cleaning to remove contaminants and a coarse stone-grind structure to channel water away. Pairing this with a fluorinated or spring-specific wax via our Wax Future system is the best way to keep your speed through the spring slush.

P-tex is a good option for small scratches on the base of your skis or snowboard, but it's not a strong solution for deeper gouges, or core shots, that expose the core. The common "candlestick" method of melting P-tex into a deep scratch doesn't create a good bond and often cracks and falls out after a few runs. For more durable repairs, a base weld is the way to go. This technique uses a specialized material and process that creates a stronger, longer-lasting bond with the base material, ensuring the repair holds up to more aggressive riding.

Not sure what a core shot is? A core shot is damage to the underside of skis that expose the core beneath the base that should be repaired to prevent further damage.