Sitting on the floor of my parent’s old house in Steamboat Springs, I helped distribute gifts to my sister, mother, and father while Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas softly played in the background . The Christmas tree stood in the place that it always had and was decorated in the fashion it always was. The smells of the tree and baking cinnamon rolls hung in the air while the crinkle of wrapping paper occasionally joined the din of the music. The mellow morning – always followed by midday skiing – was our Christmas Day routine since time immemorial, and it was the coziest of our family traditions. No other time of the year quite felt the same – an arc from childhood to adulthood lived in these moments in a most unique way.
One of the last presents left was an envelope waiting patiently amongst the pine needles. It had my name on it. Opening the gift I found several long certificates printed on cardstock – my parents had given me a five-pack of local’s telemark lessons.
I was surprised by the gift – I had only shown a cursory interest in free-heel skiing. Somewhat confounded I thanked my parents for the gift before wrapping paper and ribbon was discarded and the day lazily moved forward. Little could I know then how much this coming introduction to telemark would change the trajectory of my life; and I had no way of knowing how one man – the group’s instructor – would set me on that new path.
But when the first day of the lessons came, I didn’t want to go. I turned 26 at the beginning of the winter of 2012/2013; an age where my Saturdays were the most precious commodity – freely and transcendently wasted skiing all day before heavy après followed by waiting tables with a fast crowd at a busy steak house. How was I supposed to give up five of these days taking ski lessons?
Begrudgingly I went. Like anyone - no matter how confident in their skiing; no matter how much I thought I could learn something on my own - I needed a lesson. On day one I found myself waiting nervously with second-hand K2s and well-loved Scarpa T2s in tow as the instructors organized us into groups. I became reacquainted with feeling vulnerable; an emotion I had begun insulating myself from as adulthood forged onward.
That’s when I met Marc Sehler.
Marc – gregarious and disarming – was immediately likable. And he would be my group’s instructor for the next five weeks. He neither flexed his PSIA training too hard on his students nor did he come across as unmotivating. He was happy to have us, happy to meet us, and was ready to get to work.
Over the course of these lessons, I found my free-heel rhythm – I hadn’t yet experienced the wonder of linking telemark turns, and I was yet unaware of the flailing fun that could be had learning something challenging and new in adulthood. And I was completely ignorant to the enchantment that telemark skiing could provoke in a person.
Marc’s teaching was both technically necessary and inspiring. Poignant tips about edge pressure and boot position clicked; turns to one side were conquered, then turns were linked. Breakthroughs came on steeper slopes as Marc pushed us ever-so-slightly out of our comfort zones to use what we had learned to feel the weight transition evermore in the lead change. All coming after we had spent the first lesson simply trying to find our balance on cat tracks; simply trying to find what it meant to engage our bindings with a knee bent.
We chatted only so much about gear, no one at this stage was terribly concerned with the free-heel subculture, blissfully unaware if its pariah status and stagnated innovation. All we were doing was learning to telemark together. Marc set the tone with his easy-going demeanor and his welcoming attitude.
Over lunches Marc and I discovered we knew many of the same people. Stories of his 4th of July ski adventures in the Zirkel Wilderness were ones I had heard from others before, this time from a fresh perspective. I learned of Marc’s love of community and trail building – one thing Marc may have held closer than telemark skiing was mountain biking, and he was instrumental in the community as a builder and advocate for public trails.
By the end of the five weeks I could make some decent telemark turns down moderate slopes. Every day with Marc was one of improvement. I was stuck on that feeling and now had the tools and tips to go out on my own and become a telemark skier.
After the lessons were over I returned to the routine I foolishly felt I couldn’t leave behind for just a few days. As the months and years went by, I slowly then more quickly became a telemark skier. After a year I upgraded my boots and skis, then I whittled the quiver down to one fixed-heel setup before forsaking the alpine technique for good. I became gripped by the telemark in the way that so many before me had, and though I never knew him well, Marc played a key role in the discovery of one of my closest passions. If not for his earnest interest, if I not experienced such a relatable way to learn free-heel skiing, who knows if I would have jumped in so completely.
I would see Marc at the base of the ski area occasionally and would show off my new skis and free-heel bindings and ask him what he was up to, how he was doing. And it was always the same old Marc – happy, engaged, interested in the other human being he was interacting with.
In the late summer of 2018 Marc Sehler left this world on Emerald Mountain in Steamboat Springs, where he and his wife Gretchen had for many years built and maintained the maze of trails that accented the landscape. After hearing the news of Marc, I couldn’t help but remember how he was as a person and what his teaching meant for me. I felt pangs of guilt that I had received the gift of telemark lessons from my parents with such apathy at first – faced with the reality of our finite existence, I was so glad I had taken those lessons, so grateful my parents had been so thoughtful, and I was thankful I had the opportunity to spend just a little time with Marc Sehler, a telemark instructor and person of the highest degree.
A memorial to Marc now stands on Emerald Mountain at the junction of two trails. On a crisp autumn’s day I found myself on the very bike trails Marc had done so much to see realized, and I took a moment at his memorial – an artistic representation of a mountain bike set in a grove of aspen. The bicycle stood as a poignant and natural monument to Marc; a beautiful representation that was missing nothing save for the rider that so many in the community missed dearly.
Marc Sehler left the consummate outdoors legacy – his gentle and fun demeanor is remembered by many, and the trails he and his wife created stand as a testament to the value they placed on the community and its members. And I trust I’m not the only telemark convert who owes much to Marc.
I feel Marc, in his modest way, would have never felt that anyone owed him anything. But we do indeed owe Marc and those like him. Marc did not build the trails or teach the telemark turn for just a select few; he didn’t withhold but instead spread the word in the humblest of fashions. A community as small and ardent as telemark skiing is propelled on by only so many, but free-heel skiing is blessed to have such passion in these individuals. May we remember people like Marc and help continue their legacy for generations to come.
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