Best skin wax

I carry a thumb size piece of ski wax and use it on the fly when necessary (hoping to never have to use it). I've found the trick is to remove all traces of snow or ice from the skin using a scraper prior to a cold rough rub of the wax. Even a crystal of ice left in the skin will just attract more, and more, and more, until you're hefting cinder blocks under your skis.
As with most things unwanted in the backcountry, prevention is key. This time of year be wary of skinning from sun to shadows to sun, or from water saturated snow on lakes or puddles to cold snow.
Just my experience.

You need the water proofing oil glands from a beaver, or real seal skins.

Im kind cheap though, so I just hot wax often with parawax and a goodwill iron.

Seems like there is one type of snow that is immune to any wax... that moment when fresh cold snow gets some warm sun. Its like that stuff sticks to anything!

A trick for differant circumstances. if your skins get wet early, and they are freezing and glooping with cold snow once in the alpine. You can freeze dry them with cold snow. Scrape, pack on dry fluff, eat scrape, repeat til dry. More like when you do spring into winter. Not winter turning to spring....

I had some that I use on my whitewater kayak paddle, for grip.  A friend told me it made a good skin wax.  Skeptical, but open to experimentation, I tried it last June, on a day that went from good corn to wet slop.  It's fantastic!  Increases glide, totally stops skin wetting.  I applied it to the skins before they touched snow, at room temperature with the skins totally dry.  It lasted all day. 

It is a permanent addition to my kit. I used it all winter this season, with consistantly good results.

I'm not Swiss, and I hot wax my skins regularly, as do most of my touring friends. Use whatever you're using on your skis (usually Swix LF8 for me), rub it on both directions, iron in at ~140 degrees C., brush out tip to tail with a coarse nylon brush. Move the iron about 1.5 to 2 inches per second and you won't melt the plush.

The late great Randosteve Romeo and swixschool.com have videos up using slightly different techniques.

Hox wax your skins - it works. Just follow the video instructions and use common sense.

Sorry, it's Toko, not Swix (same company, though):



Randosteve:



PS  I use a combination of their techniques for applying the wax - I rub on like Steve (but in both directions) and hot-dab like Erich for areas that seem to have light coverage. You can do a second coat like Steve does in his video - a dry skin can soak up a lot of wax. And 140 degrees C., not F. (at least that's what it says on my iron). Not sure about using a wire brush, it seems pretty abrasive. I use a coarse nylon one.