I have now officially had my second skinning experience, or more accurately my first "resort" experience. Like SurfSnow Girl, I wanted to try skinning up a resort slope to see what it was like. I figured the safety factor was a lot higher compared to going out into the woods as I climb the learning curve.(punn intended) I skinned up a 800 ft slope at Sunday River, ME. It was under the Little White Cap Quad. It was a blue trail that wasn't groomed and had several knolls that I had to climb. It got steep enough on one knoll I was concerned about the grip walking straight up. I decided to side step for about 15 feet and use my edges. That was a mistake, with a loose heel, side stepping doesn't work to good. Well lesson learned. I did a few kick turns to get up it after trying side stepping in vain for a few minutes.
Everything worked pretty well, including me. I was surprised a little bit after doing it. It was easier aerobically than I expected (I went pretty slow and took a break as needed) but it was a lot harder or more strenuous on my leg muscles than I expected. Lack of leg strength or stamina was my limit, as opposed to lack of wind. I am sure if I went faster, the wind would have been limiting. I used the riser on my shift binding almost the whole way up. It did make it a lot easier on the reasonable pitch. When I got to the top it took me a long time to get into downhill mode, but I was wearing a backpack and put on several layers and new gloves for the ski down. The skin application part was better than my first try, I watched some Youtube and did much better.
The one question I have is how much should you lift your ski to get it to slide. If I left it on the snow, there was a lot of friction to overcome to make it slide forward. I felt like I took all my weight off the ski, but the skin didn't want to slide easy. I would then add some lifting motion to the ski and it would eventually slide forward pretty easy. I felt like I was lifting more than I should to get it to slide. I never once slipped backwards, so my wall to wall skins have plenty of grip for sure. I assume with practice I will develop a feel for how to minimize the lift to get good slide. Again my skins are brand new, so they might need some use to smooth out. I also wonder if the snow conditions make a difference. I was in packed powder with heavy moisture content. It was pretty sticky snow in general. The whole time skinning I was mentally asking, should I put the muscle effort into sliding the ski on the snow, or should I put the muscle effort into lifting the ski so it will slide very easy. I tended to favor lifting to get easy slide.
I am used to cross country and once you unweight your ski, there is no friction that has to be overcome to slide the ski, they slide effortlessly. The skins are a different beast and even unweighted, mine don't slide without some force to drag them forward.