The Sun BabelFish Blog

The Philosophy of Telemark Skiing

This winter I spent a lot of time at the Sun offices in Grenoble, and of course I took the opportunity as often as I could to practice my favorite sport: telemark skiing. Sadly I did not have a camera at the time so I don't have any pictures of the mountains around there.

To understand telemark, one of the most difficult forms of skiing, one has to understand its philosophy, and to understand that one has to also understand what its technical advantages are, and to understand that one has to understand its history. Telemark is the original form of skiing. It came to life in a world without groomed pistes or mechanical ski lifts and is therefore designed to make it easy to walk and climb hills as well as go downhill. Telemark bindings have no fixed attachment to tie the heel to the ski, which is what makes it easy to walk. Initially telemark boots were just specially designed leather boots, and so it would have been quite easy to walk in them, even on solid ground. Modern plastic boots preserve this flexibilty. The core value of telemark skiing is that one should therefore be able to use them for off piste skiing as well as on piste skiing. Telemark skiing is the ultimate skiing: by not tying the heel to the ski, it liberates its practitioner from dependance on the industrial skiing complex. This is not to say that I did not enjoy skiing on nicely groomed slopes in France. Indeed this is what I did most of the time. But the skill I am learning there will be just as useful to me outside of that context.

I bought my evolution skiis in California 8 years or so ago. They are very flexible, long and very light, probably less than half the weight of modern alpine skiis. The binding is dead simple, easy to understand and easy to fix. Recently people have started using normal heavy and shorter alpine skis for telemarking. I tried these on my last skiing day, and was impressed: they do indeed make telemark skiing a lot easier, and are probably a very good way to get learn the skills. It is much easier to turn with them in powder snow. But they have two serious drawbacks. Clearly the weight is a show stopper for longer trekking expeditions. But less obviously I think their shorter length may be dangerous. In fact I may nearly have lost an eye because of this.

I was enjoying some wonderful deep snow skiing in the Val d'Isere with these heavy but easy skis I had rented for that day. As I came to a ditch in form of a V in a hill I approached it as slowly as I thought was reasonable. But clearly not slowly enough and without putting enough weight backwards. As in telemark the heels are not attached to the ski, my skis went up back up the other side of the V and I was catapulted forward towards the top end of the skis. My whole body hit both the skis and the mountain like a sack of potatoes, and my right eye which was at the level of the leading pointed curve of the right ski, nearly got impaled on it. For a few seconds I though I may have lost an eye... Now I am not sure what the right length for telemark skis are, but one thing is certain: they should be designed in such a way as to make it physically impossible form them to ever reach an eye. So beware.

Telemark skiing is also excellent exercise. From time to time I would walk up the whole mountain, when the queues for the lift were too long. But even going down hill on my longer skis is very good for the legs and the heart as one is constantly walking with bent knees. Its not surprising that there are not more people doing it! It is hard. But I would rather exercise when I can than stand in line at the bottom of the slope.

Posted at 12:45PM Jun 24, 2006 [permalink/trackback] by Henry Story in travel  |