Face Freeze eco board-waxes
What we liked …
Cheaper than many, no chemicals, no oil-products, nature-friendly!
What we didn’t …
Umm, I’m still thinking…
The Verdict
Our Rating
4 out of 5 - only holding back on the 5th star until I can try them in very cold temps.
the Short Read…
Both the All Temp and the Graphite waxes worked as well as the - let’s face it, fairly (or very!) toxic - industrial waxes in regular and warmer conditions. They are cheaper than many of those as well, are all-natural, and come in fully-recyclable packaging. I’ll be using these again.
The Long read …
I didn’t know much about ski waxes before bumping into Grant from Face Freeze at the UK National Snow Show in Birmingham, in the UK, in late 2022. We had stands almost next to each other and although, clearly, most of our attention was on the skaters in the indoor ramp immediately beside us, we did manage to find some time to talk about snowboarding.
I found out that most waxes on the market are full of a couple of things that we really don’t want on the slopes - all in the service of squeezing the maximum speed out of our rides.
Some waxes contain petroleum products, such as liquid parafin, and I guess most of us know these days that we need to keep oil in the ground as much as possible, and definitely not use it for something as optional as a recreational (or even professional) sport.
But worse than that, many contain “Flouro” products. These are “per-”and “polyfluoroalkyl” substances, known as “PFAS” and "forever chemicals" because they take so long to break down in nature - think centuries, and longer - and which have been linked to a bunch of health conditions including infertility, cancer and liver damage, in both humans and animals. Spare a thought for Norway’s professional ski waxers - one report showed the median concentration in their blood was 10 times higher than the European Food Safety Authority's recommended levels. And of course, the concentrations in nature, around ski resorts is way higher than many places, because it’s all coming off the bottom of our skis and boards, getting into the ground-water etc. There’s no doubt that this stuff can shave a few milliseconds of pro racing times, but for most of us, we’d not notice the difference over a wax that contains no petro-products or PFAS. There’s talk of some ski federations banning it for racing.
So I’m very happy to report that in carefully conducted extremely non-scientific experiments on the slopes this last season, Face Freeze’s waxes got my board going about as fast as my mate’s flouro-waxed board. He beat me on some schusses, I beat him on others, and taking our differences in weight, frontal cross-sectional area and board lengths into account, I reckon it was about a tie.
Face Freeze’s two waxes are:
All temp
Graphite - For very cold, dry snow, or at the other end, for spring slush. Face Freeze’s website says that this can simply be rubbed on to a warm base.
So hold do they hold up in two key performance areas?
Downhill speed - I used both waxes, though only in air temps ranging from low negatives, maybe -5C, up to warmer spring temps - and in these conditions I was going downhill about as fast as anyone else who had more ‘industrial” waxes on their planks. And between the two waxes? I need more time to say, and will report back, but both got used in similar conditions and temperature ranges and I wasn’t able to tell much difference between the two. More testing needed!
Durability - i.e. how long these waxes stayed in the base - you know, before your base starts to look a bit dry and white-ish - again, hard to tell the difference from any other wax I’ve used, and I didn’t detect any significant difference between them. In my case, rather than rubbing the Graphite onto a warm base, I used an iron to give the board a full waxing. Again, more testing needed, but they did both show that their performance in this area certainly doesn’t appear to be worse than the industrial waxes I’ve used before.
Conclusion
Given the big downsides of the industrial stuff then, and the pretty much equal performance of these plant-based Face Freeze waxes to non-natural waxes - at least in regular-to-warmer temps as tested so far - I’ll be sticking with Face Freeze for my board for the foreseeable.
I'll post an update to this article after using them more, and in super-cold temps as well.
But, my recommendation at this point is to go forth and get eco-waxed up!