Why the Future of Telemark Skiing May Hinge on One Piece of Gear
As I make my way down a steep, corn snow-laden slope drenched in evening sun, using two skis to dance with gravity for just a moment in this short life, the ether seems to ask, What do you want out of all of this?
From turn to turn, I respond. It’s this!
Indeed, it’s not the ether. It’s almost assuredly myself asking such questions. The wider movements of the universe surely care little of snowsports, especially this lowly take on them. When the topic at hand is something as trivial, as esoteric as telemark skiing, the entire notion seems all the more superfluous. In that moment, my self dialogue was catalyzed by–of all things–the sweet sensation wrought by the telemark boots I happened to be wearing. To most, hardly sacred objects.
But when it’s these implements of the foot that allow for a sort of cosmic transcendence on spring snow, basking in the flux of our one star, things indeed can seem heady. Primordial. Spiritual? Perhaps. There’s a transcendence to much in this life. And the long, amplified sweet spot of a telemark turn, certainly in its aggressive, swift form rendered by plastic boots, is one of those things.
To the uninitiated, telemark boots are just that: a certain type of footwear designed for a very specific downhill skiing technique many may know little about. But just as the appeal a certain roof detail might elicit something deeper in the architect, or how the perfect marriage of caster and rod at a certain little creek may yield a whole greater than the sum of its parts for the angler, the plastic telemark boot marks the crux of something often inexplicable.
Eyes roll, as they will, on such a topic. How does this matter? the ether asks again. Nobody cares you tele goes the old refrain.
The thing is, telemark–ever prone to ebb and flow–not only matters to the telemark skier, it has proven eminently important to the wider skiing world, and thus the outdoor culture. In the 1970s, the earlier, leather-bound form of free-heel skiing instigated the backcountry movement on this continent, one more framed by rolling mountains suited to the free-heel, overland method than the precipitous peaks of the alpine world and the alpine-touring approach.
Later, telemark equipment evolved in boot, binding, and ski into something still free-heel but now closely resembling the performance of alpine gear. With the ascendance of plastic boots and stout bindings, the Nordic, downhill technique was for many the chosen method during the rise of the modern backcountry scene in the States. In a time before Dynafit’s two-pin ubiquity, and just prior to the brief heyday of the modern frame-style touring binding, telemark was still regarded as the tool of the backcountry skier. As board was to surfer; as the nascent full-suspension bike was to the then fledgling mountain biker, the implement of the backcountry skier was often the plastic, bellowed telemark boot.
While the surfer retains their status as perhaps the outdoors's chief experientialist, and the mountain biker and their tableau’s meteoric rise drips with the mandates of a now ascendent scene, telemark’s cachet–while on the rebound–has fallen since those heady days. And with that, the free-heeler’s tool, their plastic, bellowed boots, have long been subject to the waxing and waning of telemark’s tide, themselves coming to a lowly state.
Where once lived multitudes of models from several makers; where boots of different use-cases intersected at myriad points, the telemark boot scene has since consolidated–under a new-ish modern norm known more for its features than its sweet skiing sensation, and narrowed to a single important maker, the one that first brought telemark its plastic boots more than three decades ago. As models were discontinued, and as the sport seemed ever destined to the shadows, talk of telemark’s death–and the death of its boots–didn’t seem like hyperbole.
Now, as the technological milieu ever sharpens, and the fortunes of not just the downhill version of telemark, but its close cousin in crosscountry downhill (XCD) rise, telemark and its boots have come back into focus. Resources seem to be aimed at the mellow, overland, backcountry version telemark took here in the 1970s all over again, with a new plastic-incorporating boot for that discipline and its new norm in the Xplore system set for release this season.
Continuing the long evolution of the equipment aimed at the aggressive, downhill telemark skier, two new boots have recently come to the fold, the first meaningful progression in free-heel footwear in perhaps fifteen years, both models reflecting not so much a telemark-for-telemark’s sake mindset, but an assimilation with the modern alpine-touring equipment (and technique) paradigm. It’s an evolution long in the making.
Ironic as it is, the discipline that not so long ago ushered in the backcountry movement in North America, impacting its equipment and ethos, has toiled in the shadows for so long that its new footwear now appears as influenced by the modern alpine scene as the telemark one. Stiff, rigid, and aggressive, the new boots stand as a testament to technological innovation, but perhaps not so much for telemark’s sake as it is for fixed-heel equivalence. Is the telemark boot’s fate thus destined for a stiffer, alpine adjacency, influenced heavily by a scene telemark impacted greatly decades ago but now seems to be chasing?
Indeed, the ascendence of new telemark implements have long been met with grumblings. While many an early adopter of the new telemark norm danced forth, many others moaned–and still do. Even the transition from leather to plastic some thirty years ago was fitful, with multitudes still declaring that the telemark turn is still best rendered by cowhide. Fitful the way forward always has been.
Still, as the newest boots have at last been released to the telemarking masses, many, perhaps most, have skied onward, declaring a new day for telemark, while others ponder where the aggressive but supple performance of the elder free-heel boots has gone.
But we don’t just have to ask the ether such questions any longer. A reemerging telemark scene is at last at hand; a scene rising and now framed by a complete compliment of modern equipment, not least of all, in its boots.
It’s what telemark’s growing ranks say and feel that will dictate the direction the once cachet-rich bellowed telemark boot will take. So what do you want out of this? the ether entreats again.
It’s still this. The fast, strong, freeing turn enabled by the ever evolving plastic telemark boot.