Waxing so You Can Work Less:
When it comes to waxing your skis, there are two main goals the wax accomplishes. The first is that the wax helps extend the life of the bases of the skis. Have you ever looked at the bottom of a ski and noticed whitish patches in certain areas of the skis? If so, then you were looking at a dry ski that was starting the oxidation process. The oxidation of the ski base causes these white spots that will have a dramatic affect on the performance of the skis. The white spots will cause an excess amount of friction to occur, which in turns means you will have to work much harder to keep moving as you ski. The second goal that the wax accomplishes is that waxes give ski bases certain properties that help the ski glide over the snow with ease. There are a lot of varying snow conditions and temperatures, so it is only natural that there is a lot of waxes available for use.
There are two types of waxes for Nordic skiing. There is glidewax, which is used by skate skis and the tips and tails of Classic skis, and there is kick wax, which is used solely on the middle section of Classic skis. I'll begin by talking about glidewaxes. There is a wide temperature range of waxes available to use. The main charachteristics that set apart the warm waxes from the cold waxes is the hardness of the wax. The softer the wax is, the warmer the temperature rating of the wax is. The harder the wax, the colder the temperature range. The warm waxes excell in warm conditions because the softer waxes do a better job of shedding water from the ski. Warmer snow has more moisture in it, and the ice crystals have nice rounded edges so the wax doesn't have to be hard. With colder waxes, the cold snow crystals have sharp edges and is are very dry, so the wax has to be hard enough to avoid abbrasion and not as hydrophobic so that the ski is going across a dry surface. The waxes help minimize the coefficient of kinetic friction even more than what the base of the ski could do on its own. With a lower friction force, the skier does not need to exert as much force to go a certain distance. The proper wax will save you a lot of unneccassary work.
Kick waxes also share some common charachteristics with glide waxes. The colder the temperature is, the harder wax you'll want to use. The warmer it gets, the softer you'll want to go with your wax. The main difference, if you couldn't tell from the name, is that kick wax does not give a skier any glide, but rather the capability to stop the ski from gliding to the skier can kick forward and gain more force. The proper kick wax will allow the snow crystals to bite into the kick wax layer, but not get stuck and build up on the ski's base. Applying kick wax properly will allow a skier to have a combination of good, effortless glide and easy kick so that he or she may keep his or her velocity going for the duration of the ski. Classic skis are unique for this reason, they apply both low friction methods with high friction methods in order to minimize the required amount of work. If there was no kick wax, the skier would not be able to go anywhere a would be expending a lot of energy for no gain.