Every so often, everything can come together, and, for a moment, something stands in the limelight, enjoying a fleeting instant as part of the zeitgeist. Be it a song, or a band, maybe a destination, or an activity, these things frame the human experience. They give an aspirational air to the cultural path, guiding and inspiring the choices of individuals. Once, telemark skiing was one of those things. Looking back now, it’s hard to believe that the oft-reviled, seemingly irrelevant subsport was once on the cutting edge of gear and ethos – telemark was an essential component in the countercultural toolbox of the backcountry skier. Like surfer to board, free heel ski gear once represented an ideal that went beyond simple physical mechanism – the telemark skier and their equipment embodied a certain kind of transcendence from the ordinary, and many joined the movement.
But things have changed, and more than once. The waxing and waning of telemark skiing’s popularity has always been framed as a mysterious, little-understood phenomenon by those in the scene – an enigmatic beast mostly catalyzed by gear revolutions. The role of the equipment is hard to argue – the first American telemark skiers who tackled the backcountry in the 70s couldn’t have done it without their duckbilled cross-country gear. And the latest boom that ended in the mid-2000s surely has the Terminator – the late coming, first plastic telemark boot – to thank. But there must be something more.
Recently, telemark has enjoyed another gear revolution, with things like tech toe bindings, and a new gear norm, changing the turn forever, it’s future now tied to more rigid, alpine-like bindings. But that hasn’t brought multitudes more into the fold. There must be something besides the gear – maybe something flowing in the wider culture – that allows for telemark, just like anything really – to be popular from time to time. And telemark’s arc can tell us much of where we have been – who we once were as the lucky, chosen few: the ski bums. And maybe it can tell us a little about where we’re headed. If we dare look.
Taking a journey back to rural, mountainous Colorado; or Northern Vermont; or the Sierra in the mid-1970s, one encounters the many settings for the regenisis of the telemark turn. America was still reeling from the upheaval of the Vietnam era, and with the ever-looming nuclear firedeath of everything just a big red button push away, many a young person took to the fuck-it-let’s-go-skiing mindset in those Cold War days. So with their big sunglasses, long hair, and Redford-as-Sundance Kid mustaches, many ventured, often ‘Out West,’ to chase what they wanted out of a ski life.
It was a revolution, and part of a much larger social one. This wasn’t just a bunch of Glen Frey wannabes taking a gap year before taking over the family business back in Hartford – though some poor souls certainly did (and still do). Untold multitudes – men and women – took a stand against what they were “supposed” to do and lived the lives they chose. It was in this climate that telemark skiing first thrived in America – a time where people were discovering new things, going off the beaten path; ditch weed in their pockets, inventing last-call-first-chair. Living for passion first, all other things second.
Much of the telemark ethos (now oversimplified into the negative stereotype) was established in these days of yore. The hippy, free-the-heel-free-the-soul spirit was borne out of these days. While many scoff at that culture now as arrogant (and ignorant), not to mention as fashionably silly, what with their skinny skis and beaming idealism, it begs to be remembered that telemark’s awakening in America was absolutely a repudiation of alpine and resort skiing, like the wider ski bum culture of the time was a repudiation of the straight-and-narrow. Telemark was that renunciation taken to a logical end, and it was able to happen in part because the milieu of the time was ripe for that sort of exploration of something counter to the society at large. Free heel skiing, especially in the backcountry, was an escape not just from a stifling ski culture, but also from existential threats to person and psyche that many in America felt.
Looking forward to 1993, as plastic telemark boots were first coming off the line in Italy, another zenith of telemark skiing was nigh. And again much was happening in America. Our country had walked into a prolonged conservatism framed by the Regan years – a social and political atmosphere whose own resurgence we still grapple with in this day. The 80s were also marked by a permanently enhanced consumerism, and an increase in the amount of (but a decline in the substance of) popular media. What came next was a social upheaval not unrelated to the 60s rejection of the oppressively comfortable 50s.
Where rock and roll spoke to the consciousness of the Baby Boomer’s renunciation of what they were ‘supposed’ to do or be, Grunge music encapsulated a growing angst in Generation X and the existential stagnation they experienced. It was little matter that the Berlin Wall had come down, things weren’t necessarily peachy at home. And with its unapologetic authenticity and unwavering presentation of difficult, often personal topics, Grunge became the rallying cry that many a young person gravitated to. The movement ended – or more so faded – in violent and sad ways as many of the musicians in the scene succumbed to drug overdose and suicide, but also as ‘alternative’ music flooded the radio airwaves, much of it the watered-down version of the original art form.
Enter telemark skiing’s second reawakening, it’s Third Wave. Riding on the back of plastic boots and stronger bindings, the sport took off again as a ticket to the backcountry, but this time with more media – especially the fledgling internet – behind it. Movies, magazines, and attention from the mainstream outdoor world ensued. As the 1990s gave way the new millennium, and as the stock market climbed, fueling spending in and (mostly out of) free heel skiing, telemark thrived – with many a free-heeler trading in T2s for Birkenstocks in the summer as they trapsed to Phish, Panic, and (eek!) Dave Matthews Band.
It was certainly a new era – the consumerism that had been built into the American ethos since the last zenith of telemark was here to stay and growing stronger with every passing year – gear companies built enormous marketing machines that commoditized the ethos, like K2, whose brash stickers pushed telemark, hyping its intrinsic difficulty by proclaiming other sliding options were lesser. If it was any easier, it would be called snowboarding one read. Instead of needing one set of 3 pins, one now had to have a quiver of the latest cable and cartridge bindings on a growing assortment of skis of varying widths and profiles.
Outside of the ski industry, the 90s into the aughts was its own time of turning the page on a recent and tumultuous past – a cultural shift that fully catalyzed in the horror and subsequent confusion that 9/11 brought. It was a time where many felt confused about where they and their nation stood in the world. And many in the ski world still turned their focus to doing their own thing – maybe it had more of the commute-to-the-Front-Range-for-work vibe, a little more of a real job thing going, but it was also the last gasp of true mountain town living before the corporations really figured out how to gouge the communities, before the Ikon/Epic pass hoards and the antirevolution that outrageous living costs brought to the mountains.
Sure, the new music scene was rife with t-shirt sales that equaled grocery bills – the money machine had snuck its roots into every nook it could. But what the music and telemark shared was a love of the good times; both were a celebration of squeezing every drop out of a short life, rejecting most things too serious, and doing so on one's own terms, even if that happened mostly on the weekends now. There was just a bit more advertising and purchasing that went along with it this go around. Like there was in every aspect of life.
But the good times couldn’t last for telemark skiing. While masses of fans still gasp at Trey’s every move, telemark’s next step was a forced, prolonged, and present hibernation. The free heel vibe, long an outgrowth of a more idealistic, free loving time, eventually came up against the swirling jadedness of the modern world. Soon all of telemark was treated as an arrogant scourge, blighting the slopes with supposed subpar skiing and even worse tastes in music and style. Many a hater couldn’t help but remind the telemark skier that no one cared. It was a backlash rarely seen in sport: rare in its depth of ire, remarkable for its outspoken nature, and now extraordinary for its longevity. Against this nadir telemark now strives for renewed relevance that is existential in its urgency – it’s getting hard to find telemark skiers, and thus it's getting hard to find companies that are willing to make telemark gear. Supply and demand reign supreme. The world of commerce and industry, but also of culture, has moved on from telemark.
Could telemark be ripe for a new resurgence? Maybe all that is left is the cultural aspect, another time where the flow of the zeitgeist aligns.
Against all odds could telemark be ripe for a new resurgence? There is certainly the requisite gear revolution – instead of the plastic boots of the 90s, the 2020s has tech-toes and a new norm that allows for better touring and stronger downhill skiing. Maybe all that is left is the cultural aspect, another time where the flow of the zeitgeist aligns, where people are ready in numbers to move away from the mainstream, even if that comes with a healthy dose of yuppie/hipster sensibility anymore. Coupled with advances in gear, telemark could again reign, but on what terms?
And there is again tumult that could send people looking for an escape, similarly to what presaged telemark’s pervious apogees. Be it Trumpian politics, and disintegration of social norms, or COVID wreaking havoc on our previous ways of life, never mind the collapse of most people’s buying power under crushing inflation and soaring living expenses. Not to mention the new death-by-fire: climate change.
But while the telemark turn is undeniably aesthetic and photographable, its place in the modern, social media frenzy is fraught. The sport suffers from – some may say saved by – its perceived lack of radicalness compared to similar endeavors, many of which have been pornographized and promoted beyond the bounds of most people’s realities. Many may say that has kept the sport close to its original ethos, others would argue telemark is now dangerously unmarketable.
What’s more is that the new telemark gear – the latest revolution in free-heel equipment – bridges the gap more than ever toward the alpine world. The rigidity allows for more powerful skiing, but at the cost of the fluid finesse that once marked telemark technique. This new paradigm allows for faster speeds, longer radius turns, and less work on the legs. That some of this new telemark gear comes with the option to lock the heel is both ironic and telling. Because the telemark world is at odds with itself on the direction of the ethos. Business meets philosophy in an interesting interplay where the path of the sport takes on both an urgent need for revenue and a need to stay unique, stay weird, stay telemark. Some even feel that the granola stereotype is self-induced backwardness, that the hippy vibe that telemark was built on keeps the sport from enjoying wider appeal. Telemark’s very spirit – its tenets of independence, of free thinking, of striking out on one’s own – have been commoditized and valued at pennies on the dollar. The outdated vision of the heady telemark skier now stands in the way of higher participation and thus new gear (and success and revenue). The as-yet unbegun free-heeler, the multitudes of potential converts from the mainstream, are now more valued than telemark’s unique but withering culture.
That struggle is ongoing, as telemark does not fit easily into our new world order, one in which social media has commoditized reality into often ironic sound bites and video clips for the wandering mind, ostensibly creating value out of all of our short attention spans. Telemark is neither easily pornographed nor commercialized – it has little social cachet anymore and even less action-hero appeal. And above all – it’s difficult and takes time. As an anachronism in a new world, telemark is dangerously open to being interpreted ironically. What that does is create the possibility that the hipsters take the reins on the sport’s next ascent, choosing telemark as a style instead of a lifestyle. Could telemark’s vibe get subsumed into ironic fashion in a world where substance is as absent as idealism? Or worse yet, without a solid hold in social media, could it fade from the general consciousness once and for all?
We live in a very strange time indeed. Strange times come and go constantly, but our new world order of connectedness has led us all down a unique path – as unique as the hurdles our existence now faces from a new, generalized cantankerousness toward one another and a changing planet. Our winding use of idle time using technology is bounded by algorithms that lead to echoing chasms of narrow-mindedness. We are all guilty of taking the easy way out, regardless of the side effects, by using technology to make use of the perceived dark void of idleness. It’s just too easy. The new technological order has made us less patient, less capable of taking in deeper content, less willing to participate in the actual world around us while we are fed a sanitized, snippet laden version of our beautiful, possibly dying world and the interesting people and things that inhabit it. You’ve heard this one before. But it begs repeating.
There remain things in this world – sometimes they come, sometimes they go – that are worth the time they take, that are valuable because they are real; they do not rely solely on technology, nor social status. There are entities and endeavors in this world that beg human beings to pursue their path with passion and purpose. These things are fundamental – they mystify the experiencer with such purity as to bring them closer to the transcendence of mere moments of existence. This is the essence, where one moment undertaken is as infinite as our lives are short. And these things cannot be experienced via virtual reality nor induced stupor on a smartphone. You can engage with these things as they flow in and away from the zeitgeist, but sometimes, after they crash into you, they remain a part of you. How these enchantments come and go from our collective consciousness remains a mystery. But we need these sorts of things – for their idealism, for how they steal your heart, for how they might save us from ourselves by reminding us that what we have under our feet is good.
And yes, this is still about telemark skiing. But it’s about so much more. Because telemark’s fall exemplifies where much of our culture has fallen – toward easier, instantly gratifying, style-dripping endeavors. And we’ve willingly allowed that to happen, albeit while sleepwalking. Our world of skiing hasn’t dodged this poisonous fate. Of course there remain good things, but our world is now so stuck, it’s ruining our ability to undertake things for the right reasons – for passion and purpose instead of attention and internet dopamine hits. This new way of doing things is the new straight and narrow – narrow in its mindfulness as much as its intent. If ever we needed a counterculture, if ever we needed to renounce the current trajectory, it’s now.
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