Shark Tailhook from Contour installed on climbing skin. Takes all of 5 minutes. NOTE these tail hooks are for skins that anchor with a ‘stretcher’ at the tip, such as the setup used by Dynafit on their touring skis.
Are you a shop worker or backcountry skiing DIYer? Ever get tired of niggling with those tiny rivets most climbing skin companies provide for installing an after-factory tail anchor hook? You need eight years of practice in microsurgery just to get those things out of the ziplock. Drop one, and it’s like you’re looking for a lost contact lens.
When I was in Austria visiting Contour just weeks ago, owner Werner Koch pointed out a bin full of these cool little crimp-on tail clips he calls the Shark Tailhook. (Of course an Austrian trying for an English product name got it wrong. It should actually the the “Sharkbite,” so I’ll start calling them that.) I got my Atomic test skis rocking a few days ago. Enclosed in the goody box was a pair of Contour Hybrid skins, 100% mohair, with race-style tip fix and the Sharkbite as an optional tail fix. Just as I like my struddel warm and with cream, I like my skins with a tail clip. So with the extreme joy of any home workshop man-kid allowed to squeeze a pair of pliers instead of pant over a keyboard, I installed the Sharkbites. Yeah, trivial compared to pontificating on the latest complexities of pintech bindings, but perhaps these won’t need a recall?
Shark is a simple fold of steel with internal teeth. You crimp it to the skin tail by tapping with a hammer or squeezing in a vise. I found it best to start the process with a slight squeeze using a pair of pliers.
Shark skin tail hook from Contour. Viewed from the glue side of the skin.
A firm grinch with the vise gave the best install. Tapping with hammer didn’t seem to fully seat the jaws.
It’s no secret I’m as high on the Contour climbing skins company these days as some of those guys hanging out behind the apothecary just down the street from our house here in Colorado. Contour just keeps coming up with cool stuff. Better than edibles!
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
