How do you describe telemarking?

This made me think...

Lately I feel like I have to explain myself to all my AT friends... they seem to look at my gear confused... Like, "why are you doing that?"

AT = All Trendy!

Fortunately skiing on tele rigs no longer appeals to these wanabees...

That's a nice demonstration video. My only complaint is that it was shot entirely on a groomed slope. So we never get to see the skier turning in soft, natural snow. He doesn't really need to carve a turn. There's a lot of skidding in the video.

The desire to ski natural snow on light, 70mm(-ish) skis is what drove the telemark renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s. Most people have forgotten how hard it is to ski natural snow on old-school equipment. It has been made simple by fat skis. Today we don't ski in the snow as much as we ski on top of it. Need to check your speed or avoid an obstacle? Just pivot and smear.

It didn't used to be that way. Alpine skiing in the backcountry used to be hard. That's why telemarking was popular.

Oh wow, have I not forgotten! So many days I say to partners, we'd have not gotten 1/2 this far in, up or down on our 198 Karhu Supremes or XCD's or Fischer 99's!

That's a nice demonstration video. My only complaint is that it was shot entirely on a groomed slope. So we never get to see the skier turning in soft, natural snow. He doesn't really need to carve a turn. There's a lot of skidding in the video.

The desire to ski natural snow on light, 70mm(-ish) skis is what drove the telemark renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s. Most people have forgotten how hard it is to ski natural snow on old-school equipment. It has been made simple by fat skis. Today we don't ski in the snow as much as we ski on top of it. Need to check your speed or avoid an obstacle? Just pivot and smear.

It didn't used to be that way. Alpine skiing in the backcountry used to be hard. That's why telemarking was popular.

Nobody can ski like this anymore with light gear
Telemarking on modern gear, plastic boots, powerful bindings and fat skis is fun but it is closer to alpine skiing than leathers, pins and skinny skis.

Telemarking gave me great pleasure when my knees were younger. I still do it a bit when on my XC gear, e.g. coming back down the ski hill after spending some time above on the XC groomers at the pass, though frankly even with my Fischer XCDs I find parallels are a bit easier and at least as effective for me on the packed slopes.

AT also gives me great pleasure, which I appreciate now that my knees are older. I also love the weight/beefiness ratio with a light Dynafit setup. And I've learned that I also get the bonus of MUCH easier skiing when there's breakable crust. Soon after going to the dark side, I was touring a crusty tour with some really strong tele partners - if we were all on tele they'd have been at least keeping up if not getting ahead of me. But on this day, we AT skiers were getting lots of rest on the way down waiting for them.

I do miss the tele turn sometimes on steep-and-deep in cold powder, but not enough to carry the weight of releasable bindings etc., nor to give up the power steering.

Aaron,

That video rocks! I grew up in the Wasatch skiing on leathers and 3 pin bindings with those guys as my heroes. Thanks for posting that. It's why I still tele 90%