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Comment by sgt | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I grew up with skis, but I don't think I have ever heard of anyone sharpening the edges. Waxing the skis yes.

I grew up with skis too, and my dad and I would sharpen our GS skis together in the garage every Friday evening, for a weekend of racing. Used to finish them with a sealskin strop, literally as sharp as razors - for the first few runs.

Same. Kind of a nice ritual and I look back at that time spent together fondly. I also feel a bit sorry(/grateful) for all the time my parents spent on this. Driving me ungodly early so I could get to a race a few towns over, and then waiting there all day for me and my team mates to do our thing and then drive us home.

You really do notice the difference on well maintained edges. On groomed slopes I can ski anything, and it doesn't really matter. But I don't think most people realize how icy a race track can become.

They got to spend time with you, which is its own reward. I only realized this now when I got a kid (he's 3). Never thought about it that way before. Do you have kids?

Yes, that is true.

And no, no kids. But if I do, I'm thinking I'd like them to do something not as expensive and time consuming. But with my own 50 days skiing this winter, it might just end up being skiing anyways, heh.

Skiing is a great family sport. You get to build cameraderie together exploring a big mountain. It's quite an undertaking for a parent and yes, expensive. Most other sports, the parents are typically just watching.

They do it in services centers for few bucks and in a few minutes. It actually does massive difference on icy slopes - it makes difference between being helpless and being able to control where you are going.

This might be location dependent because in the Northeast US getting your edges sharpened almost every season isn't rare.

I was a scrub level skier, and had mine sharpened a few times a season. Slopes varied between powder and crusty, wind blown snow. Hitting crusty snow at mach 17 on dull skis, and you'd end up doing a high performance uncontrolled flight into terrain routine.

It’s a racing thing, mostly. Most shops offer a basic service for a machine wax + edge sharpening so that’s when most people get it done (even if they don’t really know what they’re paying for)

Tell me you don’t ski in New England without telling me you don’t ski in New England.

I grew up in VT skiing and snowboarding 4 days/wk, edge tuning was a daily ritual and base prep was about once a week (although probably should have been twice)

Hah, as a child I fractured my skull on a 7'th grade school trip to Brodie Mountain. Maybe somewhere around 1988? A quick check on Google Maps will show that Brodie Mountain is only 2600 feet high and very near Albany NY, therefore is unlikely to produce good skiing conditions. It turns out that a 15 minute lesson from your math teacher is insufficient to develop the skills necessary to stop on a completely iced over intermediate trail, so I did the snowplow directly into a rack of ski equipment going 30mph or so and wrecked myself.

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