"Ski troops" just means ski-capable, right? It doesn't give them Ski counters. So if they happen to find unpossessed Skis, they can use them - which typically won't do them much good because they mostly want to use them to cross the Lovat (and, well, move up the other side).
So in the scenario, the German has a lot of ski-capable units (all 468/248, 3 leaders, all 3 crews), but only enough Skis for 3 units. In my case, since the Russians had left enough unwatched hexes, it meant all 3 Skiers crossed on turn 1 and went back up to lvl -2 or -1 (CX).
I had no part in writing the rules for KGS. But from what is written in KGS3.6, it seems to me that the number of leaders (and crews) that may begin play as "Ski Troops" is based on the number of squad-eqivalents that
qualify as "Ski Troops" under KGS3.6. (This includes 5-4-8 squads too.) The
implication is that any leaders or crews that are granted "Ski-Troop" status begin play
with skis. While I agree that this is not explicit in the KGS rule, I think that the ski counters in the OB are provided to equip squads/HS at start.
This is borne out in "official" scenarios such as J37 where the Germans receive three ski counters for four units. Nothing in the SSR identifies these units as ski troops or ski-capable units. It's left to the player to figure that out.
Admittedly, J3 is plagued with errors, and this
might be one of them. But it doesn't make a lot of sense for the J37 OB to include only three ski counters for four units, unless the leader is automatically considered to have his own ski counter.
A more germane example would be KGS17, a scenario with two ski counters in the Russian OB, and an SSR that designates Russian 5-2-7/2-2-7
s and any one leader as "Ski Troops."
Unfortunately E4. doesn't help either. It's quite vague with regard to SMC. I
suspect that skis are supposed to be treated similar to bicycles, with SMC being entitled to a one-man, white counter. Given that we don't have separate ski counters for HS, it's not surprising that there are none for SMC. But there aren't a lot of scenarios featuring skis to begin with.