What's the difference between skis and cross country skis?

Question

i have no knowledge of skiing but i own a couple of pairs of skis and want to try cross country skiing. would i be able to use a regular pair of skis. if not how much would cross country skis be.

Answer 1

Cross-Country skiing is on flat(or not as hilly) land. Downhill skiing (that would be regular skis) is on steeper terrain where you can glide down a slope. There is also a large difference in the actual skis. Cross-Country skis tend to be a lot skinnier and longer than downhill skis. They also use different bindings. Cross-Country skis have bindings where you can lift the heel of the boot up. This makes it easier to move forward. On downhill skis, the boots remain in the bindings.

I hope this helped.

Answer 2

What? You mean the difference between cross country and alpine? Jesus. About 120K p/h and the actual potential of getting your silly *** killed!

Here's the breaks. Cross country skiing is a form of sport derived from Nordic/Viking winter hunting/military displacement. It's great exercise, scenic, you can actually talk to your girlfriend, instead of just bombing the hill ahead of ther. You can also carry weapons on your back, which is why cross-country is the basis of the biathlon winter sport.

Alpine, a.k.a. downhill, skiing is a fast, dangerous sport practiced by speed demons and controlled sucidal and/or sadistic maniacs that will snuff you out for fun, if there are no witnesses around. It is a fast-paced sport that can reach-up to 128 Km/h in competition  downhill or over 251 Km/h if doing speed skiing. Good alpine skiers can expect to exceen over 100 Km/h downhill on real slopes, like you can find in the higher Tatras, Appalachians, Rockies, Alps or Himalayas. Although there are many differences, all skiing basically makes use of poles (though alpine and telemark make it optional).

Cross country skiing makes use of soft ankle-boots, or booties (ankle-height insulated shoes with front-end bindings, basically) where only the top tip of the boot is bound to the ski, and heel rest is used to set the foot upon the ski. They are also narrow skis, where the skis are always about as wide as your heel, from side to side. This is the slowest form of skiing, and is therefore most suited to its primitive origins of hunting and soldiering.

Telemark skis are a downhill derivative of cross country. The skis are much wider, boots much stronger, poles can be adapted from alpine and speeds are much higher than x-country Just like x-country skiing, only the front-end of the boots are bound to the skis. The wider skis, stronger boots and poles allow you to negotiate apline terrain, only in a bent-knee guise, which makes it faster than x-country and more dangerous to your knees and person (overall), but usually quite slower than alpine skiing.

Apline skiing is the ****. It is an orgasmically fast and dangerous sport (requiring serious self-mastery). Boots are hard an mostly un-movable, though they allow for some forward inclination. Bindings are stiff and often placed on an impact-absorbing binding mount). Skis are heavy, long and/or wide. You can reach some of the fastest speeds in alpine skiing and if you're a dolt, you'll be scraped-off the side of some cliff or tree by rescuers. There is no boot lifting like in x-country or telemark, you're stapped-in hard and either accelerate down a hill, turn, break, or eat some or nature's harder stuff. You go head-first avoiding trees, boulders and mountain facades at breakneck speeds, over bumbs, ice and in-between your slower co-inhabitants. It's like a drug, only it won't fry your brains, unless your head stops dead agains a tree, or the face of a mountain (or a large rock or boulder, or even a tractor, ehehe). Downhill skiing is extreme. Some snow-boarding is just as much so (only it's less sophisticated and may involve knuckle-dragging, do they eat more bannanas?).

Speed skiing is probably the most extreme form of skiing: aerodnamic clothing and helmets, no poles, and just pure speed downhill. Deadly, if your skis hit your helmet and pierce right through and then eath and then your skull and brain.

Ski-jumping is also very dangerous and exhilerating. Can you pictue goind over a curved jump at over 90 Km/h with the longest skis in the business (146% of your body height). You're expected to land at the longest possible distance, and not fall and have your legs wrap around your neck.

Freestyle skiing takes from snowboarding and ends-up with lighter alpine skis with identical tips and ends, so you can alternate directions and ski backwars and change orientation when negotiating slopes or obstacles. It's hooligan skiing re-written.

This is the difference between x-country and apline skiing. If you're out for a liesurely ski, get xome x-country skiing. But expect to get exhausted if you try to catch some speed. If you want the absolute in extremeness and dont fear truning into a buch of plasmatic gellatin at then end of the day, take-up downhill.

There you go.

Answer 3

XC skis are specifically designed for cross country travel. Downhill skis are specifically designed to coast downhill.

There are lots of differences. XC skis are longer, skinnier, and lighter. The bindings allow the heels to come up.

Here is an example of some XC ski packages, including the special boots:

http://www.orscrosscountryskisdirect.com...

Answer 4

regular skis are wider and have edges but i cant see why you couldnt use normal skis for crosscountry

cross county skis dont cost to much