Skin material
Also called climbing skins, mohair skins, nylon skins
The plush on a climbing skin: mohair glides best, nylon grips and lasts, a mix splits the difference. It sets the feel of every uphill meter.
Climbing skins are strips of directional plush glued to the base for the ascent: the fibers lie flat when you slide forward and dig in when the ski or splitboard tries to slip back. The plush material is the choice that defines the skin. Everything else, glue, tip and tail hardware, trim, is secondary to what the fibers are made of.
The three options
Mohair is Angora goat hair. It glides noticeably better than synthetic fiber, which matters more than it sounds: on a long approach with rolling terrain, glide is the difference between striding and trudging, and over a 1,000 m day the saved effort is real. Mohair packs smaller and weighs less. It also wears faster, grips a little less on icy, steep skin tracks, and costs more.
Nylon is the synthetic workhorse. Maximum grip, maximum durability, the lowest price. It shrugs off rocky early-season skin tracks that would chew through mohair. The trade is glide and weight: nylon drags on the flats, comes back to the pack heavier and bulkier, and the drag compounds over a long day.
Mix skins blend the two, most commonly around 65 or 70% mohair to 30 or 35% nylon. The blend keeps most of mohair's glide while the nylon content stiffens the plush for grip and wear. This is the default answer for most touring, and most skin makers put their mainline product here.
Choosing by how you tour
- Long days, fitness touring, racing: mohair or a high-mohair mix. Glide is the budget you spend all day.
- Rocky terrain, resort uphill laps, first skins: nylon. Durability and grip forgive both the terrain and the technique.
- General backcountry touring: a 65/35 or 70/30 mix. The compromise is the right answer more often than not.
Grip technique narrows the gap between materials more than the spec sheet suggests. A flat-footed stride with weight over the whole skin grips on mohair where a heel-lifted tiptoe slips on nylon. Buy the material for your days, then learn to walk on it.