We have been in the tent the entire day repairing skis. I’m just finished. The operation has taken me 11 hours and it was extremely difficult and demanding!

The first thing we did was to move the bindings on three of our skis 5–6 cm further back. Each of them are now positioned immediately above where we registered the strain in the materials. This moves the main strain point – and hopefully in time. We can only hope that the skis are not so damaged inside that they break anyway.

The big repair job that I had to carry out on my one broken ski was excruciatingly difficult. And we still don’t know how it will hold, since we haven’t had a chance to walk at all today. What I did was to first saw off 25 cm from the back of that ski. Then I used that piece as a reinforcement where the ski was completely broken, attaching the binding to it, and screwed it onto the middle of the main section of the ski. Well, actually since we don’t have so many screws, I had to find an alternative way to attach them. I drilled 16 holes through the ski and the reinforcement, and then used a shoelace – I have very strong shoelaces – to tighten it all. That should give a strong yet flexible joint.

I’m really hoping this repair job will hold! I think it will. But it’s horrible to consider the thought that every single one of our skis might have to be repaired in the same manner. Hopefully we won’t have to do that – because it took an insane amount of time.

We’re going to have to have a serious word with our ski producer when we get back. These skis are clearly not what they’re made out to be and not what we ordered. It looks like they’ve just given us ordinary skis, and not the reinforced ones that we were promised.

Tomorrow we’ll test the results on the ice.

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