You should be doing safety checks on your skis each season, ideally, multiple times a season, to ensure that nothing is gauged, loose, or potentially dangerous and in need of repair.
Why Should You Safety Check Your Skis?
For those avid skiers, a quick safety check should be done every time you ski. Checking your skis and bindings before hitting the slopes can help you to have a more enjoyable ski experience. While this won’t 100% guarantee that nothing breaks during your outdoor excursion, it allows you to keep an eye on any damage or potential areas of concern on your equipment.
How to Safety Check Skis?
The quickest way to inspect your skis is with a visual check. People oftentimes inherently do this, whether they’re purposefully doing a safety check or not.
When you begin, check the base of your skis. This is the area where you’ll likely see scratches and general damage from catching rocks under the snow. There are different levels of damage, which range from superficial scratches to the dreaded core shot which exposes the wooden core of the skis.
With minor scrapes and scratches, you can ignore them if they aren’t overly deep or developing an overhang. However, when it comes to core shots — the unfortunate reality is that you may have to buy a new set of skis. If left unattended, your snowboard can begin to rot from the moisture.
After you’ve looked at the base, you’ll want to examine the edges of the skis. Look for any cracks or burrs. While they may seem minor, you’ll want to ensure that they don’t wiggle around too much. If you lose an edge while skiing, the metal teeth that were holding it into the ski can fly off and cause potential havoc on the hill.
An important component of your safety inspection is to check the bindings. This is where your boot is attached to the ski, so it must be secure before you put your foot in. You won’t want to experience a premature release while on the mountain.
Once you’ve checked over your skis and sought any repairs necessary, you can simply throw on a fresh layer of wax and get ready to go skiing.
Just as important as the safety of the ski is making sure you are warm from top to bottom of your body. Only when your body is warm can you exercise better. In addition to wearing suitable clothes, you should also pay attention to keeping your hands warm. If necessary, you can bring a rechargeable hand warmer to help keep you warm, such as the Ocoopa Union 5S rechargeable hand warmer used by many people, which can continue to heat for 15 hours constantly to ensure that your hands are warm throughout the skiing process. And it is also very convenient to carry, it does not take up space in the pocket and does not affect movement.
Before skiing in winter, remember to check your skis, and also don’t forget to keep yourself warm!
