A100

Notes on the Ermine Skate A100

“The A100 was the skate that launched Ermine, and in many ways it was a statement about where I felt Nordic skating was going as a sport. I’d been skating for half a decade at this point, and our small crew of Nordic skaters was starting to push against the limits of our equipment. We were skating on really rough and silty ice, bashing our skates through wetlands, even walking in our skates over short portages. I felt that the type of skating we were gravitating toward — what’s often called ‘adventure skating’ today — demanded a new type of Nordic skate.

The 1.57mm blade Ermine specified for the A100 was unlike anything else on a Nordic skate at that time. It was exceptionally stiff and resilient, and had excellent glide on warm wetland ice. I was also adamant that we mechanically pin the blades with four ‘oversized’ spring pins, since blade pullouts were the most common cause of failure on existing Nordic skates. To date, we’ve never had a single report of a blade pullout on any A-Series skate.

The skate’s geometry set it apart, too. The A100 launched at a time when conventional advice was still ‘get the longest skate possible,’ and most Nordic skate blades were relatively flat (a radius of 35m was common). By contrast, the A100 came in shorter sizes and had a smaller 25-27m radius. The result was a skate that was agile and playful, while its low deck height meant that it was also incredibly stable.

I wanted our new skate to have a new look. The polymer-ceramic coating I settled on was labor-intensive and pricey, but it performed extremely well and set our product apart from all of the anodized skates out there. As one of our four original colors I chose to do a white skate since you can’t anodize white. White was the worst seller, unfortunately, but it was little aesthetic announcement that Ermine would be doing things differently.

In some ways the A100 was a risky move: it was heavier than other skates on the market, it was built like a tank, and it was painfully expensive to manufacture. But as soon as people got out on the ice with the A100, they ‘got’ the design philosophy immediately. It was (and continues to be) an incredibly fun, confident, and durable Nordic skate. And the rest is history.”

Paxson Woelber
Owner, Ermine Skate
January 2026