Telemark's Dead, Right? Not So Fast. Meet NTN Tech.

The mainstream outdoor media has poked fun at the sport and declared it dead multiple times. But the last decade has seen a gear-driven revolution on a not-so-new binding format that could catapult telemark into the a new era of popularity

Photo credit: Thomas Boyd

While most of us in the ski world have spent the last 10 years griping about lift lines and real estate prices, there has been a revolution in telemark gear. I know what you’re thinking – telemark is dead, right? Far from true. Out of sight from regular skiers and away from mainstream outdoor news, a level of innovation has taken place that the sport has rarely seen before. The turn’s adherents have taken notice, quietly migrating to a new free heel platform – the New Telemark Norm, or NTN. And with the recent addition of the Dynatfit tech toe, NTN bindings are now available with performance and features on par with their alpine counterparts. These bindings have not only made telemark skiing easier, they achieve a parity with alpine gear that eliminates most of telemark’s disadvantages. This could inspire new participation in free heel skiing, and bring telemark a lot closer to the mainstream than ever before.

This arc has involved a decade-long battle between two incompatible binding formats. Bulky and reliable 75mm, the old Nordic norm, has been the binding of necessity and choice since the beginning. Now the emergence and maturity of the 15-year-old ‘new’ telemark norm has radically changed how free heel skiing is performed. The practitioners have taken notice, motivating manufacturers to shed the old norm while fostering the new platform’s latest innovations. All this could have huge ramifications for a sport of ski world cast-offs, and it ultimately might mean that – believe it or not – a lot more people could be telemark skiing in the future.

The current revolution in telemark comes from several innovations, but started with one in particular: the advent of the New Telemark Norm. What NTN does is change how the boot attaches to the ski on a telemark binding. Instead of a cable wrapped around the heel like in 75mm bindings – the traps most non-tele skiers would probably recognize – NTN latches to the boot with a platform attached below mid-sole. It sounds simple, but this advent has huge implications.

This new format was envisioned more than 20 years ago as the successor to the classic but outdated 75mm system and it’s duckbilled boots. But NTN’s journey to telemark norm of choice has been anything but guaranteed.

For nearly 100 years, cross country skiing had taken place on 75mm bindings – the Nordic norm. Norwegian firm Rottefella introduced the system, with its big toe piece and three-pin connection, in 1927. And the format stayed in that corner of skiing for generations until a group of skiers began an experimental journey that would result in an American rediscovery of the telemark downhill technique – pioneered and perfected by Norwegian Sondre Norheim some 100 years before. This contingent of Crested Butte skiers, including Doug Buzzell, Craig Hall, Greg Dalbey, Jack Marcial, and Rick Borkovec, looked out at the Elk Mountains and dreamed of skiing their steep faces and virgin snow. It was the early 1970s, a time before easily available alpine touring equipment, and their best choice to get into the backcountry was using cross-country gear – floppy leather boots and skinny, long skis mounted with free-heel 75mm bindings. While that gear helped them travel into the backcountry, a downhill technique was at first elusive. Legend has it that someone in the group found an old photograph of Stein Eriksen’s father practicing a telemark turn. Using that free heel, downhill technique, the Crested Butte contingent started the first wave of American telemark skiing.

What followed was decades of counterculture powder hunting by the first crop of American telemark skiers. Powder Magazine even covered the fledgling sport, both new, brash, and alternative at the time. Three-pin bindings and lace-up leather boots predominated for the next several decades until Scarpa upended the sport with the introduction of the Terminator, the first all-plastic telemark boot, in 1993. Now telemark turns could be more aggressive, stronger, and easier to learn. That triggered the second great awakening of the telemark movement. Participation culminated in the early 2000s, both in the backcountry and on the resort, when roughly 300,000 people were taking part. By then three-pins had given way to spring-loaded cable bindings that offered higher resistance and more capable skiing. And by the turn of the century mainstream ski companies like K2 had entire lines dedicated to telemark, and many other companies followed suit to join in on the rush.

But challenges arose that would create an almost existential threat to the sport. While the plastic boots and stiffer bindings made the turn easier to start and more fun once you did, it was still much more difficult and physically demanding than alpine skiing. And telemark continued to be popular in large part because it was still the best known system for walking into the backcountry. All that started to change around the turn of the century with the large-scale introduction of alpine touring bindings into the US market. AT frame bindings from companies like Fritschi had a free pivot walk mode and were capable of solid downhill skiing. These lured many a tired free heel skier to the alpine side. But the AT movement got it’s leader with the proliferation of Dynafit bindings; their 2 pin toes and minuscule weight becoming the zenith of backcountry ski gear. Through the 2000s telemark participation dwindled. Backlash toward the subculture also grew out of a perceived feeling that telemark skiers acted above their alpine counterparts. Slogans rooted in the 80s like “free the heel, free the mind” were rebutted with “nobody cares you tele.” In the midst of all this, Rottefella introduced the successor to 75mm bindings, the NTN system, in 2007.

Though NTN bindings were immediately an improvement in downhill performance, they initially ran into lukewarm support. Coupled with the system’s backward incompatibility (a duckbill boot couldn't work in an NTN binding), the new rigid bindings also skied much differently. 75mm bindings allowed different techniques without much consequence while NTN favored a specific weighting during the turn. Many skiers attempting the switch were rebuffed by the stiffness of the NTN platform and the learning curve of this new technique, not to mention the need for new boots with the bindings. It was an underwhelming start to the supposed revolution, and many in the telemark community swore off the new norm wholesale, vowing never to switch. So the long road began for NTN.

A new vision of the future of telemark emerged, one without the disadvantages compared to alpine touring equipment

All this relegated telemark to cast-off status by the late 2000s. Telemark had seemingly entered a sort of Dark Age, with many declaring it dead. But two hugely consequential innovations took place that would allow NTN to finally eclipse 75mm as the telemark platform of the future. First was Mark Lengel’s Telemark Tech System (TTS) introduced in 2011. Though not an NTN binding, his system was the first to incorporate a two-pin Dynafit toe attachment in a telemark system. Second was the 2014 launch by longtime telemark manufacturer 22 Designs of the preeminent NTN binding, the Outlaw X. The TTS system was proof that the paramount toe piece for backcountry touring could work for telemark, while the Outlaw – the late-coming supreme NTN binding – finally brought the new norm into maturity. It showed just how versatile the NTN platform – it skied and toured more capably than the first generation of NTN bindings, and quickly became one of the most popular in telemark.

The revolution culminated with the combination of these innovations – the creation of the NTN tech binding. Not long after the Outlaw was released, a small French firm led by engineer Pierre Mouyade released the Meidjo, a telemark binding that combined the two pin toe with an NTN connection.

This combination created a telemark system that could equal alpine touring bindings, which had long bested telemark in weight and touring efficiency. The Meidjo also allowed for alpine features like ski brakes and safety release. But the biggest takeaway was that it made telemark skiing easier with higher performance. Telemark skiing on the Dynafit-style pins delivered more power and control to the edge, more so than the original NTN bindings could muster. This brought the potential level of skiing up to a new level with the features and usability of alpine bindings. A new vision of the future of telemark emerged, one without the disadvantages compared to alpine touring equipment, something that had always dogged telemark gear.

What’s ensued is a sea change in telemark skiing. The sport’s slow-to-evolve base has finally moved strongly toward NTN, with retail sales of the new platform far outpacing the old norm. The industry has reacted, too, with many manufacturers spending the last 5 years culling 75mm from their offerings. The hope is that these manufacturers will pivot toward NTN, finally letting the sport move further on toward a new paradigm of equivalence with alpine touring gear. Josh Madsen, owner of Freeheel Life Industries, (which includes his ski shop and a digitally relaunched Telemark Skier Magazine) sees 75mm’s demise as an opportunity. In response to frustration over the continued fall of 75mm gear, Madsen responded on his weekly podcast “Why the big fuss? One day we’re just going to call this a telemark binding again…this is less about the death of 75mm and more about what opportunities need to be addressed in NTN – i.e. a telemark binding.” Craig Dostie, one of telemark’s leading voices and original founder of Telemark Skier Magazine, agrees. “The performance limits of 75mm have been reached and exceeded with NTN” said Dostie in one of his weekly videos on the Freeheel Life YouTube channel, going on to say “NTN offers much more torsional rigidity and more power and control on downhill…that’s fantastic.” The telemark base has made their move – now to be seen is how many newcomers will be inspired by the lower barriers to entry to try telemark skiing for the first time. And how many will stay with it.

While no one thinks that telemark skiers are about to overrun their alpine counterparts on the slopes, the stage is set for telemark’s best chance at growth in years. The marriage of NTN technology with the Dynafit two pin toe has brought about a parity with alpine gear that has never been seen before. That means higher performing, modern gear that allows for easier and more fun telemark skiing. And with many of the disadvantages of telemark remedied by NTN and NTN tech bindings, there’s reason to believe that more people will be drawn to the sport as the gear continues to evolve.

With that comes the possibility of a really exciting and unknowable future for telemark skiing. Hybridization is already underway with bindings like the Meidjo and its optional alpine heel – more of that is surely on the horizon. This points to a melding of the disciplines, of telemark and alpine becoming more indistinguishable as time goes on. NTNs long-coming ascent over 75mm brings telemark closer to alpine skiing in terms of usability, but also culturally. A new generation of telemark skier has begun replacing the old guard. They look and act just like their alpine counterparts, and they ski NTN in large numbers.

To some there is something lost in moving away from 75mm. Telemark once prided itself as the independent, finesse-oriented counterweight to alpine skiing’s power and popularity. It didn’t mind being in the shadows, and the 75mm binding was the tool. The grit and independence of that generation of free-heel skiers remains unmatched. But for better or worse telemark has already moved on. While many see 75mm as the embodiment of telemark purity and indefatigable soulfulness, some see the previous paradigm as a world of superfluous difficulty and insularity. NTN promises a future of high-performing and easier to ski bindings for the sport, toward a détente and assimilation with alpine skiing. With that could come a future of higher participation and possibly a place in the mainstream, especially as the disciplines converge. But that also might mean telemark’s unique ethos, so intertwined with the turn, could soon be changing, too.

This is one of the great crossroads telemark has seen. It could result in the abandoning of the spirit that made telemark what it was – fiercely autonomous with unyielding regard for the turn. But NTNs path is telemark’s chance for innovation and wider acceptability. No, telemark isn’t dead, far from it. Its popularity might be just beginning.