Episode 7: Zach Caldwell and the Art of Fleet Management

Zach Caldwell is, to hear the American ski community tell it, one part man, one part myth, and ten parts legend. He has been variously described as — deep breath here — “one of the best resources out there especially when it comes to ski selection and grinding” (this per Andy Newell), “a scion of America’s first family of Nordic skiing,” “Vermont’s homegrown ski whisperer, with the ability to almost magically divine a board’s properties” (this in Outside magazine), and, memorably, as simply “ski Jesus.”

(R.I.P. JohnnyKlister, which gave us the final sobriquet. Everyone go read this piece from spring 2009 for a trip down memory lane.)

In this space, I would describe Caldwell as simply the latest guest on “Who Woke Me Up?,” the now surprisingly professional nordic skiing podcast with a name that remains somewhere between inscrutable and incongruous.

Over the course of two (okay, two-ish) wide-ranging hours, Caldwell talked about skis, to be sure. He talked about how many skis you should have, what types of skis you should have, what types of grinds you should have for your skis, whether you need to test your skis (TLDR: yes, for the love of god), and more. But there were also forays into, inter alia, the past, present, and future of the U.S. Ski Team, the performance of the American tech team during last week’s Tour de Ski, and much more.

Caldwell is, famously or perhaps infamously, @grumpyskier on Twitter. But his bark may be worse than his bite. He is expansive, thoughtful, and consistently illuminating. I guarantee that you will learn something, likely many somethings.

I also have to give Caldwell a shoutout for the self-proclaimed “nerd files” section of his Caldwell Sport YouTube channel, which features, say, a 14-minute video on tip splay, or a 37-minute video comparing and contrasting two different Red Creek brushes, as viewed through the lens of the changing conditions that greeted the 11th vs. the 45th starter in the classic sprint qual at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. One of these videos is made up for humorous effect. I think.

Seriously though, and I say this as someone who once wrote nearly 1,000 words of a legal brief about a comma, I have a deep, abiding, and unalloyed respect for the man’s passion, erudition, and, yes, devotion to minutiae.

If you want to know what you “should” wax with for a given set of conditions, there’s an app for that, or at least a website. If you want to know what wax combo will work far better — and, more significantly, why it will work better — Caldwell will tell you that. Plus, probably, an enlightening story about why a slightly tweaked version of this wax call worked well for Kris Freeman in, say, the 15km classic in the Otepää World Cup in January 2007. With no notes, because he will just remember.

Anyway, I love the guy, and he is a great storyteller. You should listen to his stories here.

This episode is embedded above. You can also listen to it on Apple Podcasts here, on Spotify here, or anywhere else you get your podcasts (here is our RSS feed). As always, podcast content does not reflect the views of either the Nordic Insights editorial side or its advertisers.

Update: This episode is not short. You may appreciate being able to consult a (computer-generated) summary and transcript of the whole thing, which you can find here. I would describe the summary as quite helpful, and the transcript as less so. I would personally recommend using the summary to zero in on a specific part of this 2.5-hour opus that you want to hear more about, but ultimately this is up to you. The machines did this for me, so use this if it benefits. Oh also none of the internal timestamp links will work for you, sorry.

I described this podcast above, imho justifiably so, as “now surprisingly professional.” The substance of this production has ab initio been due to Fast Big Dog’s passion and enthusiasm for this project. The now notable technical competence to match is due to (a) an extremely generous listener who donated some quality recording equipment to the cause (but who wishes to remain anonymous), and (b) audio engineer Nathan Shuttleworth. We, like, sound like a real podcast now, which is legitimately exciting to me.

Thank you, as always, for your support. And be sure to send in questions for Caldwell that you would like to hear answered in an upcoming episode. They can be about skis, ski wax, or anything else skiing-related, with “related” here interpreted quite broadly. Leave a comment at the bottom of this article, or email podcast (at) nordicinsights.news.

— Gavin Kentch