Posts Tagged ‘Nils Larsen’

XCD History – The Beginning

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

Rooted in the “back to nature” movement of the early 70s, XCD skiing drew from an adventurous crowd fanning out across the country looking for alternatives to the status quo. Throughout the mountains, ambitious alpine skiers got caught up in the renaissance of Nordic skiing, captivated by the gear’s light weight, ease of travel and most of all, simplicity. In spite of the adventure, one problem remained: this great touring gear was excruciating on any descent. Filling the void for more downhill-friendly Nordic gear was Antii Tiitola, a powerful Nordic and downhill skier from Finland with a dream design for a ski that would marry the Nordic and downhill qualities lacking in skis at the time. Built by Karhu North America, the ski was christened the XCD. The name was the perfect encapsulation of the ski’s purpose (Cross-Country Downhill), and to a larger extent, captured the essence of the whole telemark revival.

As part of the XCD History Project, Karhu’s Nils Larsen connected with Antii Tiitola this winter. On the 30th Anniversary of his original designs, Antii Tiitola shared the story of XCD inspiration and innovation:

Nils Larsen: What is your ski background, Nordic and Alpine? I have heard you might have been on the Finnish National Ski team?

Antii Tiitola: As a Finn I have grown up with skis. Every kid learned cross country skiing in my time. Afterwards I learned ski jumping and about in age of 16 started alpine racing. I raced among the 10 best in Finland in the junior series in all alpine events. During my university time I won the Scandinavia UNI Championships in slalom. I was on the Finnish National Team for the 1962 season, in the European World Cup Races and FIS World Championships in Chamonix 1962.

After ‘62 I started to work as engineer and finished the active racing. My interest turned to motion sports, and I concentrated on training for ski marathons, which continued until ‘78. After that telemark skiing became my main interest, and I also participated in telemark racing until the year 1992.

NL: In Canada, the name Titan was used with Karhus a lot, including the early XCDs. I have heard that this originated as your company (Titan) in Finland and then at some point you became the head designer at Karhu Finland and the company became Karhu Titan OY ?

AT: Yes, Titan was the brand name for skis and hockey sticks produced by my company Tiitola Oy. I started this company in1966. It was producing alpine skis, xc skis and hockey sticks using a unique fiberglass technology developed by myself. In early 70`ties Karhu interested about my technology and the negotiations ended to a merge of the companies in 1973. The name of the new company became Karhu-Titan and took the responsibility of R&D projects and product designing.

Read more…

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Posted in XCD History Project | 2 Comments »

Altai Skis at Powder Creek, BC

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008


(Nils and his touring quiver at Powder Creek, BC. Photos courtesy of Nils Larsen)

Inspired by his trips to the Altai Mountains of China, Nils Larsen began building his own Altai skis over the winter, chronicling his progress here on the blog.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

With the skis completed, Nils brought them up to Powder Creek Lodge, BC to test out on his recent hut trip. Continued from Monday…

I finally got out on the big boards late in the day Thursday and on Friday for some test runs near the cabin. The light was trending to milk bottle but the snow was cold and fairly deep. I had a bit of trouble adjusting the bindings (stiff rawhide is hard to tie) but soon got the hang of them. The skis worked great in my test runs and I quickly got up enough speed to generate several spectacular wipeouts.

Saturday, our last full day there, the weather finally warmed up. All tired from a week of touring, we headed out early for a short tour to the north before the snow warmed up. I strapped on the Altai skis and tagged along, wondering what I was getting myself into. The snow on the north side of the Back Door pass was still cold dense powder. My first run was low angle and I found the snow fast and eminently skiable. My next run was quite steep and I quickly exceeded my comfort level on these skis. I was able to make some modest turns and as the day progressed I got more comfortable with speed and balance.

The snow thickened and warmed though and after lunch we headed back to the lodge. We stopped at the top of the pass and some of the group tried the Altai skis off the north side. Slides were starting to rumble in the warming sun as we skied back to the lodge and the cold beers we had waiting.

Success!

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Powder Creek Trip Report

Monday, April 28th, 2008

The US/Canadian dollar may be nearly equal, but a hut trip to British Columbia is still the best deal going for ski trips. Karhu’s Minister of Ski Culture, Nils Larsen, is freshly back from one of his favorites:

Powder Creek Lodge is in British Columbia’s Purcell Range – north of Nelson on the east side of Kootenay Lake. We flew in on Sunday, April 6 for a week of touring here in this wild range in central BC. We were blessed with cold weather and occasional snow most of the week, typical of spring in this area. If you have never hut skied, you have to try it. When it comes to backcountry skiing, staying in a comfortable lodge and day touring in spectacular terrain and powder snow is at the very top of the skiing food chain, and Powder Creek ranks high in world of BC lodges.


(Powder Creek Lodge and the view south. Photos by Nils Larsen.)

I had brought my newly finished pair of Altai skis in to try out. But with the skiing as great as it was, they would have to wait for us to tour the goods first. What fantastic skiing and a week with good friends!


(Ridge touring on a snowy day.)


(Bill Love, skiing home.)


(Forrest skis the trees. )

To be continued with a report on skiing the Altai skis on Tuesday…

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Hide & Seek in the Adirondacks

Thursday, April 10th, 2008
One more trip report from Nils Larsen’s swing through the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains in early March…

The Adirondack Backcountry Festival continued on Sunday with another 4-6 inches of low-density snow overnight. Conditions looked stellar and Ron Konowitz – a near legendary local skier who has skied in the ‘Dacks since the late 70s – agreed to take me touring. Ron is also famous for his secrecy about where he skis, something I had heard about from other locals. Maybe it was because I was from across the country, maybe it was because we were both old-time (some might say over the hill) tele/XCD skiers, but Ron led me off to some choice private stashes.


Ron and Nils near an unnamed woods slash. Numerous Adirondack slides in the distance. Photos courtesy of Nils Larsen.


The snow was cold and light, knee-deep in places.


Ron, bringing up the rear and covering tracks.

Our second ski of the day clued me in to the extent of the previously mentioned secrecy. We parked along a main road (I must be ambiguous here as I am sworn to secrecy), quickly grabbed our ski gear and dodged into the bushes. We put our skis on and took a roundabout route up to a well-used snowshoe trail, carefully disguising our tracks entering the trail. We climbed for an hour or so, passing lots of snowshoers but no skiers (the dumbing down of winter sports is a sad thing). Ron was careful – very careful. The trail was narrow and studded with roots and rocks, but we let all questioners know that this was our planned route down. I won some points here for diving into the role, telling people in my folksiest voice that ‘we may be foolish but, hey, what do we know?’ People looked at us strangely and, Ron thought, sometimes suspiciously. He recognized a few folks which made him all the more careful.

Finally, near the top and in what I thought to be an impenetrable thicket of spruce, we stopped. There was no one in sight and Ron and I quickly took off our skis. “Throw your skis as far into the thicket as you can,” Ron whispered. There was a sense of urgency as we crawled into the thicket after our skis. While we may have been able to throw the casual snowshoer off our true intentions as we skinned up the trail, throwing our skis into the woods and dog-crawling in after them would be hard to explain. Ron continued to whisper directions. I had just found my skis when he told me, “Throw them again, we’re not far enough yet.” I hucked them again, and we crawled on. Ron, bringing up the rear was filling in our tracks as we went – erasing tracks in snow is impossible but when you throw snow in them, they could be anything. If anything, they would likely be considered dog tracks… people don’t normally crawl into thickets.


Finally we stopped and put our skis on. Ron did a few final loops through the brush and trees to throw off any possible trackers – something I considered highly unlikely at this point. The snow was excellent, deep and light, and we were now scouting for skiable lines. As we dropped a bit things started to open up. This is a relative term, and I use it here measuring with an Eastern yardstick. It seemed unskiable to me, but Ron knew my limitations in Eastern forests and he led onward.


Ron, scoping for good lines.


We finally hit some narrow but skiable slots in the trees, once again in Yellow Birch. These trees were quickly endearing themselves to me.


True to his word, Ron delivered excellent skiing. We did a few laps in here, our private forest. We did see another ski track, though Ron thought he knew who it was. Our ski out was thickety in places, but I had the extended forearm position wired, and combined with the good snow, I almost felt proficient in these Eastern forests.

We circled wide to get back on the trail, again disguising our tracks as we hit the track.


It was a great day of skiing, made all the more interesting by our need for secrecy. The ‘Dacks are a big range, but there is not a lot of good skiable terrain close in. Secrecy is certainly common with backcountry skiers, especially in well-used areas. Out West the landscape is far more open, so it becomes problematic to try and hide your tracks. In the East though, the finding and protecting of secret stashes has been developed into a fine art. Who knows what gems lurk just out of my range of view as I drive through the mountains back insto VT.

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Making Skis Part IV

Monday, April 7th, 2008

The final installment from Nils Larsen, as he finishes building his own pair of traditional Altai skis:

After the skis had dried for about 10 days I did a little clean up with the plane and a knife and then prepped them for the bindings. The skis are mounted on balance point and the bindings go through four vertical holes in the skis (this four-hole pattern corresponds with some of the oldest bog skis found in Scandinavia and Russia). The bindings are rawhide, from some fresh cowhide I picked up a month ago. Now dried and dehaired, I sliced it in strips and softened it by working it over a bar and rubbing it with oil.

Cutting rawhide for the bindings.

Burning holes for the bindings. After I dug out the holes with an awl, I cleaned them up with a heated steel rod.

Building the bindings. I followed the binding design that was most common on the Altai skis, basically a rawhide ‘X’ that the toe of the shoe went through and a strap around the heel to hold the shoe in.

Putting the skins on. The last big step was putting the horsehide skins on the bottom. I soaked them overnight so I could stretch them over the skis. They will dry tight as the skin shrinks when it dries. I used tacks to hold the skins on, as they do now in the Altai. Traditionally they would lace the skins on the skis with rawhide but I have not seen this in my visits.

As a final touch, I cut up some old rubber boots to put in the foot area. This is common now in the Altai and reduces icing under the foot. I will take these into Powder Creek with me this week and try them in there!

For more on Nils’ project, read Making Skis Part I, Part II and Part III, and watch a clip from Journey to the Source.

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Making Skis Part III

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Another dispatch from Nils Larsen, as he builds his own Altai skis:


I tried first to bend the tips in the fire as I saw done in the Altai. The problem with this was that I waited too long and a lot of the moisture that was in the tree when I cut it had evaporated. I tried soaking the tips in water too, but this didn’t work either. I had been told by people in the Altai that when the wood was dry they simply boiled the tip for a while and then bent it.


I finally came up with this set up: a 20-gallon barrel over a fire with a slot cut out of the top.


The bender is made from Douglas maple, a good stout wood that grows in the creek draws around here. The benders in the Altai were a mixed lot of whatever they could find, but generally White Birch.


The bender is worked up and down the ski tip to get a uniform bend. I found the thickness and taper of the tip needed to be right in order to get a good shape to the tip.


In my movie, Skiing in the Shadow of Genghis Khan, Gessir tied off the bender to the ski to hold the bend while the ski cured, but I chose to secure as Chokue had. He was the premier skier in the region as well as a great woodworker, and I only had one good bender.


This is the blocking method Chokue uses. The skis need to cure now for a week or two. I plan to have them finished to take to Powder Creek, BC on April 6.

For more on Nils’ project, read Making Skis Part I and Part II, and watch a clip from Journey to the Source.

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Sparkling Snow and Sapling Sting

Friday, March 21st, 2008

Arriving a week earlier than me on the East Coast for the Adirondack Backcountry Festival, Nils Larsen found the best – and later in the week at NATO, the worst – of East Coast conditions. “You East Coasters are a bunch of sandbaggers,” said Nils, but he never hesitates heading into a line.


(John Seibert tours up through the sparkling powder. Photos by Nils Larsen)

I left for my East Coast trip on February 28th and arrived that night in Burlington, VT to full-on winter. I stayed with my good buddy John near Bristol and that night the temperature dropped to -15F. The snow was cold and soft, and we went for a tour in the mountains behind his house. The snow was some of the best I have skied out East, cold and soft with lots of surface-hoar sparkle to the top layer.


(Quick turns in boot-top fluff.)

East Coast skiing is a different animal from the West. The trees are mostly hardwoods, and the absence of leaves in the winter makes them appear more open then our western woods. This, however, is not the case. The uninitiated skier (that’s me) quickly learns that those innocuous little one inch twigs sticking out of the snow will garrote you just as fast as the birch, beech, and sugar maple. One always skis with goggles and forearms raised and ready to clear a path…

-Nils


(”Open” hardwoods.)

I’d say if he knows the fine art of forearm branch blocking, Nils is well ahead of the learning curve. Is it really tree skiing if your cheek doesn’t get kissed at least once by a sapling’s sting?

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Making Skis Part II

Thursday, March 6th, 2008
More photos from Nils Larsen in this week, as he continues making progress on his own Altai skis (see the previous entry here).

It’s been a while since I split the log, and I am now ready to do the axe work needed to shape the log halves into the blanks for skis. You can see the Altai ski in the foreground which is the template that I am working off of. There will be many hours of chopping and shaping to get the chunks whittled down to a ski. I also found my source for the horsehair skins, with the passing of a local horse. Will be ready to bend the skis and work on the bindings soon.

-Nils

For more on what inspired Nils to make his own Altai skis, and some history on the project, get to Mad River Glen, VT on Friday, March 7th at 6pm for an evening presentation of his new movie, “Skiing in the Shadow of Genghis Khan.” It’s a great start to Mad River Glen’s annual NATO Telemark Festival, which begins Saturday morning.

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Making Skis

Monday, January 7th, 2008

Happy Monday! The forecast looks strong this week for some night skiing and maybe a powder morning. Over the weekend Nils Larsen passed on a couple photos and words from his latest project. After traveling several times to the Altai region of China to document skiing’s oldest roots, he’s begun making a set of skis in the Altai tradition. Be sure to watch Nils’ Journey to the Source clip to see how the Altai build and use their skis. It’s a really cool project, and it will be fun to follow his progress in construction and use.

After 3 winter trips to the Altai and spending quite a bit of time on their skis, I have decided to make a pair using, as close as possible, their tools and methods. Why? In part because I like making things by hand, and because I like skiing – it’s a natural joining of interests. The more prominent reason is that I’ve acquired a taste for this type of skiing, and I’m nervous about breaking or damaging any of the skis I’ve brought back from the Altai. They all have personal stories and histories attached to them as well as being collector’s items.

The wood used in the Altai is spruce – light and relatively strong. Living in the interior of WA, I have quite a bit of Engleman Spruce around here, which I think is ideal for the job. In early December I went into the woods near my house and picked out a straight tree about eight inches in diameter, cut it and hauled it back to my place. The tree was growing in a shaded creek bottom so it was tall as well as straight, as you can see, and I got two good logs out of it.

More to come,
Nils


Two good logs to start.

Split and ready for the next step. Photos courtesy of Nils Larsen.

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Happy Holidays

Friday, December 21st, 2007

With good snowfall abounding, most of the Karhu office is taking advantage of the timing of the holidays to get away from the desks, computers and phones for a welcome break. The forecasts look good, from Vermont to Colorado, California, Washington and more. So with that, the blog will be a little quieter for the next 10 days, until we return in the New Year. I hope you take advantage of the same to shut off a little from the wired world, and take a leisurely tour, work up a sweat, or just make some turns with friends. Enjoy the time with your family, and admire the wonder of the mountains in winter that always seems to feel a little more special when the flakes fall this time of year.

For anyone who does check in, here’s one more little treat before signing off… a clip from Nils Larsen’s Journey to the Source. Nils just finished up his latest project, “Skiing in the Shadow of Genghis Khan,” the culmination of several years of travel and skiing in China, exploring the roots of skiing in the Altai region.

Says Nils, “I had a great first showing of my new film, “Skiing in the Shadow of Genghis Khan” on November 15th in Tahoe, Sponsored by Alpenglow in Tahoe City. We had a standing room only crowd of 150 people at the Sawtooth Ridge Cafe and the show was a benefit for Project MANA. Karhu donated a pair of XCD 10th Mountains to the benefit for Project MANA and we raised more then $600.”

Enjoy the clip, and take the time over the next two weeks to share some of the many smiles shown by Nils and his friends in the Altai. We’ll see you on the other side…

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