The Great Unconformity In Telemark Knowledge

Recent telemark lore reminds us that the sport not so long ago suffered a profound retrograde.  Roughly from the late-aughts to only a few years ago, telemark was dismissed, ignored, forgotten.  Telemark is dead, an idiom that oft left the mouths of retailers unable to move free-heel gear as the sport fell out of favor in the 2000s evolved into a refrain uttered at the sport's expense, used by a skiing populace all too ready to throw telemark under the bus.

No one cares you tele, lock the heel ski for real soon followed, becoming common tropes hurled at free-heelers as the telemark skier was deemed too arrogant, too heady; their gear derided as the tool of those who needed an excuse to suck.

These supposed axioms little capture the depth of the telemark experience of the time – but they have become part of the historical telemark self-identity. Some with a newer ideal in telemark have picked up on these cliches and insist – if incorrectly – that telemark has only recently become a realm inhabited by hard skiers, and only because of their cadre’s late arrival.   Asked what their recommendation was for the future telemark generation in the winter 2024 edition of the TELE COLO zine, podcaster Adam Sauerwein replied in part that “using telemark skiing as an excuse to be bad is not acceptable anymore,” seeming to imply that, not so long ago, it was.

Most new generations eschew reverence for those who came before, but in this sport the narrative also has a marked gap, and it often shows. Because telemark’s fall wasn’t only a social one, but a cultural one. For years few if any pieces on The Turn found themselves published. And telemark itself reached its last zenith before the internet truly took off.  The hard skiing zeitgeist of that time is thus mostly lost on a social media-bound new guard. Much of the content of the day can indeed be found in hard copies of Couloir and Backcountry magazines, though they are mostly attracting dust, sitting on shelves if not landfills, their pages sequestered from the free-heel knowledge base, most of their websites long ago mothballed.

Thus a discontinuity of information exists in the sport.  Yes, a dark age ensued, with little apparent movement in the sport.  But that notion does little to illuminate what was actually happening in telemark, or what telemark skiers were doing then.

Hard skiing on telemark gear – whose roots first sprouted decades ago – was still happening in the off-the-radar aughts, just amongst fewer participants.  In fact, some argue the craft was at a height, concentrated amongst a dedicated few.  Writing of telemark’s fall on his blog WildSnow in 2018, eminent backcountry skiing chronicler Lou Dawson opined, “in my view, the positive aspect of this is that the skiers I see telemarking are the hardest of the hardcore. No more linked fall amusement. Instead, these guys and gals have it down. They’re fun to watch, fun to ski with.”

Moreover, a literal revolution in telemark gear was then underway, a renaissance that essentially nobody covered – except Craig Dostie via his telemark bomb-shelter-blog EarnYourTurns, a resource few younger telemark skiers probably know about. On the heels of the new telemark norm’s introduction in 2007, myriad other innovations came about.  Mark Lengel’s Telemark Tech System, first brought to life in 2011, was the first telemark binding to incorporate a two-pin toe.  A few years later Frenchman Pierre Mouyade released his Meidjo binding, the first tech toe NTN trap.  And the preeminent NTN binding – enjoyed by more than a few newshcoolers nowadays – came to life when 22 Designs released their Outlaw X in 2015, squarely in telemark's ebb.

Alas, that time is either forgotten by the new guard or was never apparent to them.  And we can little blame them.  Not only were they not there, they are focused on their scene, their moment, and the deeply personal experience it is to take to the telemark turn.  And they need the latitude to imprint their own legacy on the sport for those who come after; a future corps who themselves may take on a classic mindset.  Thinking that the previous generation were lesser skiers than themselves.