Roofs are for Santa not Bikes or Skis: Get a Hitch Ski Rack!
About 15 years ago most bikes were transported on the roofs of cars. Anyone who has ever loaded a mountain bike on the roof of an SUV after a long day of riding single track knows it sucks. There is no easy way to load your bike on the roof of a car, much less an SUV. The answer was simple enough: hitch bike racks. The first couple of years, hitch bike racks were a bit of a science project, but anything was better than mounting bikes on the roof. Pretty soon some excellent hitch bike racks were developed and soon enough roof racks went from the dominant way to transport bikes to an anachronism. Now 80% of bike racks sold are for the hitch not the roof.
If it works for your bike, why not your skis? It is true skis weigh less and are a little easier to mount on your roof than your bike, BUT why settle for a little easier when the Gravirax tube ski rack is truly a game changer in ski transportation.
Why You Need Tube Ski Rack?
Successful, safe and fast loading of skis is good. It's so simple an 8 year old can do it. All you have to do is drop your skis in a tube. Poles? Drop them in too. Once in the tube, GRAVIty keeps them firmly in place. Is there another ski rack that allows for such easy loading and unloading? No. Also no risk of your ski rack being frozen shut, or wondering if you managed to get it locked closed with ice crusted in a roof ski rack. And if you are jamming out to Dark Side of the Moon on the way to the hill and you get to the quiet part, you will not hear wind whistling through your skis. An added bonus to being quiet, the Gravirax ski rack is also a tiny bit more fuel efficient due to less aerodynamic drag.
When dropping kids or friends off or picking them up at a busy transit center, the Gravirax ski rack takes less than a minute to load or unload 4 sets of skis. Got your ski boots on and don't want to climb on the icy runner of your car to load your skis? --no problem just dump them in the Gravi4 HDPE tubes.
The Idea Behind the Design of Ski Rack!
The Gravirax owners live in the mountains. We see all kinds of things, from naked pond skimming to flips off of cliffs into tight chutes. We have also seen all kinds of ski rack failures. Driving down highway 70 near Eagle CO I saw a ski roof rack fail. It had popped open and the snowboard had tumbled off the roof, smashed the rear window of the car, and then flown into the windshield of the following car. Two broken windows, one broken snowboard and luckily no injuries. What happened? My guess is snow and ice had jammed the locking mechanism ever so slightly so although the driver thought they had safely closed their roof ski rack system, they hadn't. Was this a one in a million incident? NO way. Every week I see some form of roof ski rack failure, just not as catastrophic as the one on highway 70. Often on the exit routes from ski areas there are digital billboards asking 'IS YOUR SKI ROOF RACK LOCKED SECURELY?' Not a fear with the GRAVIRAX hitch ski rack.
Collaboration with Best Steel Manufacturers!
What happens when you mix some avid skiers and some steel manufacturers on a long motocross race across Colorado? We created the Gravirax4 ski rack. It's not just some pipe welded to a hitch. Its HDPE pipe which is designed to be in the elements. And it's not just steel, it's high end powder coated steel. It's not just welded to a hitch, but given a simple yet sturdy pivot to swing down to allow trunk access. Given our knowledge of the super harsh conditions our racks operate in, with temperatures ranging from -15F-50F in 24 hours plus salt, grit, ice, snow and mag chloride we wanted to have as few moving parts as possible. We gave the Gravi4 only one area that moves, the swing pivot. And given our knowledge of our ski rack working conditions, we wanted to make sure that our pivot could be easily maintained. All the wear and tear is designed to be borne by bushings in the pivot, and those bushing can be replaced in a matter of minutes.
What else do Ski Guys Think About When Building Ski Racks?
Obviously, our skis. We didn't want our skis bouncing against the steel plate at the bottom of our rack, so we made plastic pucks to help protect our skis and the base of the rack. We also didn't want a lot of snow to build up in the base of our tubes so we built a drainage slot for each tube in the base of our rack. We also understood that our ski rack would extend the length of the car so we offset the rack to the passenger side to keep the back up camera clear, keep the license plate visible, and skew loading to the curb side as an additional safety feature.
In addition we set our ski rack back far enough to provide extra clearance for either your backup camera or rear mounted spare tire and as an added bonus a number of car trunks open without need to use the rack pivot feature. Want to lock your skis for a long drive or an overnight park? Loop a cable lock through your bindings and through the rack. And we admit it, we wanted our racks to look cool. So we went all black because it goes with everything. The HDPE pipe is designed to withstand harsh mountain UV light, and its black through and through, our powder coating process is phenomenal providing an excellent and long lasting black durable finish.
Conclusion:
Skiing is fun, your ski rack should be fun too. You can load your skis in a Gravirax ski rack with one hand, allowing your other hand to do whatever it wants, including but not limited to, holding a cup of coffee, a breakfast burrito or an adult beverage. We have seen our ski racks used to hold apres ski picnic tables, pong tables or even used for playing corn hole. Tired after a long day of skiing or want to be fast to the hill, forget the roof ski rack and get a Gravirax.