Is Telemark Skiing Growing? Does It Need To?

Spend much time in the tiny, esoteric world of telemark and you will soon find a certain discussion rear its head; a nagging question, often asked as refrain, that at once feels ancillary and pressing.

Is telemark growing?

Existential concern over free-heel skiing isn’t new and isn’t without reason.  The sport has long made due with less - including participants. And while telemark has seen great strides in gear development over the past decade with the ascendance of tech-toe bindings and the long anticipated release of the new Scarpa boot (the revamped Tx Pro being the most modern boot telemark has yet seen) the sport has also fallen markedly from its peak of popularity in the early 2000s, adding to the ever-present anxiety over how many free-heelers are out there.  

While never amounting to much, those halcyon days had things telemark doesn’t enjoy now: competing film tours, dedicated magazines, and attention from the big manufacturers. The story goes that we are now left with but a few core producers to keep the lights on, and a devoted but diminished cadre of telemarkers is all that keeps the vibe going.

But while the hyperbolic ‘telemark is dead’ trope may have reflected the crash of the free-heel buying landscape well (the phrase initially found life as a refrain from retailers who couldn’t sell telemark gear after the the sport’s popularity cratered in the aughts), it never captured what was actually happening on the ground.  Telemark contracted but its remaining skiers were devoted, concentrating the sport amongst a select few. Some have even argued it may have made for a stronger and more steadfast free-heel population. Referencing telemark’s dwindling numbers, WildSnow’s Lou Dawson opined in 2018, “in my view, the positive aspect of this is that the skiers I see telemarking are the hardest of the hardcore. No more linked fall amusement. Instead, these guys and gals have it down. They’re fun to watch, fun to ski with.”

Moreover, while never amounting to options galore, telemark continues to see new gear come to light, and the core manufacturers - Voile, 22 Designs, Scarpa, Bishop and others - continue to make great telemark gear, as they long have. 

Still, with paltry numbers, telemark participation often appears anemic, and many in the scene grow worried of the health of the sport’s participation.  And many a free-heeler has long looked across the aisle at alpine skiing and salivated over their cornucopia of their gear options - a seemingly endless continuum of binding, boot, and ski permutations.  If only more people telemarked, these folks surmise, then there would be more demand for innovative gear.

Thus the state of The Turn receives constant attention amongst the free-heel intelligentsia, with many wondering if the sport is growing, by how much, and what could come if more took to the genuflecting turn.

From this mire a chicken-and-the-egg conundrum emerges: would more people telemark if there was more gear? Or do we need more participants before that gear becomes available? 

Gear-before-growth supporters can point to a classic case study; Scarpa’s introduction of the Terminator in 1992, the first all plastic telemark boot. “Plastic boots were THE watershed event that propelled telemark into the limelight,” says Craig Dostie, founder of Couloir Magazine and one of the most important telemark voices of the last thirty years. “There was a lot of pent up demand built on the writings of folks like Steve Barnett, Rick Borkovec, Capt. Powder, Alan Bard, Tom Carter, and John Dostal in the 80s. But the leather foundation prevented alpine skiers from taking their prognostications seriously. When Terminator arrived, all that changed.”

On the heels of the Terminator, telemark skiing went from a tiny but cachet-heavy countercultural outlet to a mainstream-adjacent, relevant force in the ski industry. Culminating around Y2K, a time often cited as the Second Wave of telemark skiing in America, hundreds of thousands are thought to have taken up The Turn.  And many hope, with the right mélange of factors, that gear tree can be shaken again to similar results.

We may find out soon. Scarpa’s release of their long anticipated modern telemark boot, the new Tx Pro, is another possible watershed in the making for telemark.  The model is the first fully modern telemark boot the sport has yet seen, tuned for touring and downhill turns as much as any alpine touring boot.  And pent up demand has intersected with social media enthusiasm, creating the feeling of a potential micro-groundswell for telemark.

“The big leaps in sales numbers really – I’m going to start with that because I think participation is a different number. Sales are really lifted by new innovative product,” says Scarpa North America CEO Kim Miller. “And you could go down the list of where something – a big change, not just a brand but a trend – shaped skis, alpine touring features in alpine boots – I use those as two somewhat recent changes.  They really helped spike sales in those categories because there was something new to talk about.”

As the telemark faithful line up for this generation's new boot, the looker’s-on wait to see what effect this will have for the sport, another inflection point rife with its own anticipation.

“When we wait nine years to introduce a new telemark boot, we hear that there is a pent up demand and a lot of people are ready for that,” Miller says.

The release of the new Tx Pro may be a grand experiment in the theory of gear-spurred growth. Still, without a dedicated trade organization or specific data from SIA, it remains a mystery how telemark participation is changing.  Aside from anecdotal intuition, there is little to go off of.

Speaking of the nebulousness of telemark’s growth, 22 Designs co-owner Chris Valiante points to the lack of any hard data. “There’s no great numbers out there, and we have a sense of what our sales are but overall it's always tricky,” Valiante says. “But, yeah, anecdotally it seems there’s a lot more buzz around it the last year or two.”

22 Designs, long one of the most important and innovative makers in all of telemark, is one of the most core producers in the mini-industry.  Their Outlaw X NTN binding is the best-selling trap on the new standard world-wide, giving them a unique look into not only how well telemark is doing as a whole, but especially how strongly innovative gear is faring.

While anything implied in Valiante’s comments is intriguing, in many ways the sport seems to function like it always has, in passionate pockets. Though lately new ones seem to be popping up. “It’s cool that [telemark] has the hotspots where it kind of keeps percolating, and then we hear about new areas where it’s growing,” says Valiante. “Whether it's different countries in Europe, or Northeast US, or wherever. Hopefully that sense we’ve had is true and we’ll start seeing more telers everywhere.” 

While the question of whether telemark is growing is hard to pin down, an even more theoretical inquiry closely follows it - how much does it matter that telemark grows?

The sport has long been defined by its independent streak, and an ethos of doing more with less.  While those notions have given way some as more telemarkers seek greater gear and cultural parity with the alpine world, many free-heelers not only hoard their old equipment, some still like the sport as it has long been; small, esoteric, weird.  To many a larger herd may run contrary to the telemark scene they know and enjoy.

But some insiders fear that mindset is recipe for disaster. “I wouldn’t say it’s good where it is now,” Josh Madsen, owner of the eminent (though possibly shuttered) Freeheel Life telemark shop said last year of the current state of the sport. “I think for it to carry on into the future it needs to grow.”

Madsen had long seen his role in telemark as not only lead proprietor, but as the voice for growth for the sport, something he saw as crucial to the longevity of free-heel skiing. Madsen’s goals for growth coalesced around access - from availability of new gear in his retail shop to providing telemark rentals, something woefully difficult to find. 

“That hope of mine is to create product, create a space where you can rent stuff, you could try it,” Madsen says. “And frankly that’s the biggest hiccup, how do you grow something when someone sees it and they’re inspired to try it and then there’s nowhere to go to do it?  You can’t find equipment, you can’t get information, you can’t get instruction. That’s why telemark isn’t growing as fast as it could.”  Madsen’s thoughts feel all the more poignant considering his shop - long a leading resource for the sport - is no more.

“It needs to grow just like anything because you’re going to have an aging out population and there’s enough barriers to entry to get on a ski hill or into the backcountry from a financial perspective, we need to make it more accessible,” Madsen concludes.

But whether telemark is growing or not, the last decade has indeed been a pronounced step onward for the sport.  The cadre of innovative home tinkerers - long a fixture in telemark - continues their toils, ever pushing the gear forward in their garage laboratories.  Manufacturers themselves continue their own work, moving toward newer offerings, limited as they may be, to keep the flame alive for telemark.  And the turn is still taken to by many - young and old - continuing a chain of adherents that spans not only generations, but now centuries. 

So is telemark growing? Does it need to? 

Perhaps the operative question is actually: is telemark thriving?  

Telemark remains small. And the number of folks involved has ebbed and flowed over time.  But taking stock of the gear available, the passionate individuals ruminating on free-heel skiing’s prospects, and the ever-devoted folks still telemarking in the wild, the answer seems to be a resolute yes.

But what gear and cultural assets that come next may indeed be bound to how many more people take up The Turn.  And fresh gear and a rising vibe will play their part if indeed telemark is poised to grow in a meaningful way.