This Might Just Be Telemark's Year

But it’s far from guaranteed

The snow was odd at the base of the mountain; slushy on the surface, but icy and firm just below. My skis shuddered trying to find an edge as meltwater soaked my ski pants.

Nearing the bottom, I skied toward a younger telemark skier, fresh-faced and with his goggles running under his helmet. As I approached him, he flicked his skis in a balanced nose butter, spinning completely before coming to rest, looking right at me.

“Nice, man,” I said to the fellow free-heel skier.

“Nice, man,” he mocked.

I immediately felt a sting of resentment, and skied onward, wishing I had said something in response. I shouldered my skis at the edge of the snow and walked over the bricked promenade toward my car. Seething.

That kid has no clue how hard I was skiing, I thought. Screw these punks coming up.

I found my car in the middle of the half-empty lot. I wiped the slushy snow off my skis and put them in my roof box, took off my sweaty ski boots, and drove on in silence. My mind wandered as I followed the centerline home. And as the rawness waned, a new thought entered my mind.

There’re some younger kids telemarking with some attitude.

And that might be a good thing.

The conversation began with what sounded like a car door closing. And about ten minutes late.

“I just got stuck at a Home Depot and got behind schedule, I apologize,” Andy Merriman, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of ATK Sports North America told me with a disarming laugh. Merriman had spent years at Black Diamond Equipment and later Traeger in leadership roles before the boutique Italian binding maker tapped him to helm its North American operation in 2024.

A minimalist ethos and reputation for quality had helped ATK become one of the most well-regarded brands in the alpine touring space; the choice gear for those taking part in the cachet-rich, human-powered version of skiing.

But ATK had done something that pointed to a new day for skiing’s less glamorous cousin. They were in the process of releasing a telemark binding.

“We want to provide an ATK-level product for our users,” Merriman said after I asked him about the business case for the new model. ATK had released a free-heel binding more than ten years ago, and the time seemed right to jump back in. “If we consider backcountry skiers, telemarkers, it may not be a revenue driver, but it’s a product that we would love to offer.”

Something had changed. After years had gone by when even the sport’s own manufacturers had released only a few models, a mainstream ski company, however small, was coming to market with a telemark binding.

Kim Miller—the spectacled, amiable CEO of Scarpa North America—spoke to me in similar terms a few years earlier when discussing the company’s decision to finally release an updated telemark boot, the TX Pro, in 2024. “It seems like a very small market, that’s certainly how it appears,” Miller said from his home in Boulder, Colorado. “It’s not just about the size of the market but it’s about the market share from a business case perspective,” he continued. “Small market but big market share is the relationship that makes it economically viable, if I can be so bold to use that term.”

It marked the first major boot update in telemark skiing in roughly fifteen years. Scarpa subsequently released a follow-up model, the TX Comp, last season. And ATK is shipping their Newmark binding to dealers this fall. All as more young people, film tours, and energy seemed to be coming back to telemark.

In the spring of 2022, I was speaking with a man in the twilight of his career. And Kim Miller had seen the ski world embrace then forget telemark, only to seemingly accept it anew. But Miller remained modest, just as telemark sales had long been for the bootmaker. “Nobody gets into the telemark business because of the money,” Miller said.

Miller had established a ski shop in Denver in the 1980s simply called Telemark, when the city was quiet and the sport was flourishing. Sales grew as free-heel skiing became the funky but well-regarded choice of the backcountry skier. Miller sold the shop and joined three-pin binding and climbing gear maker Chouinard Equipment in its waning days. He stayed on as it evolved into Black Diamond, a leader in the modern telemark movement, before making his final career stop at Scarpa. “This is a labor of love,” Miller said, seeming to speak both for Scarpa, and himself. “We are so invested in the telemark business and have been forever. When boots were leather. Before AT was a thing.”

Miller has been credited by more than a few telemark diehards for single-handedly keeping Scarpa on the free-heel path. Then Scarpa announced in August of 2026 that he would step down as CEO and be replaced by Jonathan Degenhardt after a long transition.

And the duo gave telemark credit for its role in Scarpa’s history, but not in the way a free-heel skier might hope. “One early challenge was that we were known as a telemark ski boot company,” Miller told SGB Media in August. “We had to get some traction in the bigger market to become more of a mountain sports and lifestyle brand.”

And Degenhardt echoed Miller. “What’s really kind of special is we’re basically the only telemark boot manufacturer out there,” he said. “That’s hyper specialization. I don’t think that’s going to be massive growth there, but it’s really awesome to totally own an entire category.”

While telemark seems to be back, this moment feels just as much like a crossroads for a ski turn whose fortunes have ebbed with time. Telemark gear positioned as a halo product at ATK or a market share leader at Scarpa points to wider forces making entry and innovation feasible. Like the wider outdoor world’s more accepting view of the niche sport, or how little competition exists in the free-heel boot space. Telemark is being treated like a well-regarded niche, and that standing is never guaranteed.

But modern consumption is based on the niche. Substack grants untold perspectives for the curious reader. At least thirty flavors of Goldfish can be found on a supermarket shelf. And telemark could find its foothold as a viable small-market force for ski and boot makers. But it will have to reestablish itself as a healthy subculture, not just a fad.

And something has changed. A new guard with a fresh approach and new attitude may just be coalescing; in the many flashy youths the ski world over showcasing their own bravado at the base of so many ski areas.

But the real test is whether that skier’s friends and younger siblings—or even their kids—also pick up the telemark turn.