RR day 2 -some challenging skiing conditions.

On the bus to the starting point, a friend asked me if magnets were strong enough to hold the modules in place on the skintecs. At this point, I had never had any problems, but this would come back to haunt me before the day was out.

The first half of the day is 30km mostly along an old railway track. Without pushing too hard, I did this in record time - about three and a half hours, arriving just before midday. It gives me a bit of confidence that despite a drop off on my balance and technical skiing, never good at the best of times (and redeemed a bit later in the day on some tricky steep slopes), I can at least pound out the kilometers on the more gentle parts of the course.

However, around the three quarter point, I was having a bit of trouble with the skis sticking, so stopped to check them before a steep descent. Horror, of horrors - one skintec module was missing. I let people at the back know to keep an eye open for it, but a kind skier had found it and caught me up just before the finish to reunite me with it. Fortunately, I had been carrying the better grip modules as spares.

It highlights a couple of interesting points. Firstly, how did it come to be lost? On examination when I found I had lost it, the other module had some icing. I suspect there is a point where a module ices up and the grip of the ice to the snow/ice below is greater than the attraction between the magnets. But it also shows that under some circumstances, the snow packing into the cavity left when a module is removed can provide decent grip, if slightly sticky and unpredictable. This does at least give an option to try in tricky conditions when all else has failed.

The conditions this happened in was freshly falling snow, just above zero, perhaps just below as the point at which it happened was on a climb.

A nice gentle day, except for the hills at the end.