Telemark, that is…
…anyone do / done it?

Always fancied telemark skiing / ski touring and this was the reason I started skiing in the first place. But totally hooked on the thrill of alpine skiing I never progressed that initial idea.

How do you get to give it a go? Not the sort of hire kit /tuition you see widely advertised. Only thing that has occurred to me is buy some boots and skis and give it a go!!!!

Go on a holiday to Norway. The kit is the standard to hire and tuition is widely available. Its what I did when I wanted to learn. Most of the resorts are not technically challenging so you wont get distracted wanting to go alpine skiing.
I know you can get hire kit and tuition up here in Scotland.

I can say its hard work but really good when you get it right.
Unfortunately I am a boarder so I really need to alpine ski properly before I can progress.

Why add the extra complication. Concentrate on the job in hand.

You’ll be able to hire Tele kit and get Tele lessons in just about any resort in the Alps. Actually, I’ll go out on a limb and guess that you’ll find what you need in every single resort in the Alps.

Here in Sainte Foy (not exactly a mega-resort) you can hire tele gear in all the shops and I know of at least 3 independent Tele instructors plus the ski-school does tele lessons.

Disappointed. I thought this was going to contain bannings for inappropriate references to Heather Mills!

Why add the extra complication. Concentrate on the job in hand.

My current thoughts are that….

Alpine skiing is great for the Alps. Lots of snow, lots of vertical and lots of lifts.

BUT, if we are going to be getting more snowy UK winters, I’d like to be able to get out and ski a bit more locally.

Tramping around in DH boots for hours with a pair of heavy skiis on my shoulder, for a crappy short DH run doesn’t sound like much fun.

So, i’m thinking, could the ability to use ski touring kit could make UK winter skiing feasible ??

You do realise that ski touring kit isn’t the same as telemarking kit?

Ski touring stuff mounts on normal skis but has the option of freeing the heel (for walking with skins on) or clamping it down for skiing.

You also get much lighter boots from the likes of Scarpa to do the job

I know that modern ski touring gear from the likes of Black Diamond, Scarpa etc, has the ability to release or clamp the heel binding, yes, so I guess that would be the best way to go… but can they be skied with only the toe binding? or do they have to be skied alpine style?

I believe they need skied with the heel fixed down, so you’ll be restricted to alpine style

For the UK messing about just buy some ski-mountaineering blades, I got a pair with skins and releasable heel bindings. Great fun in the Scottish Highlands, can walk uphill in the boots / skin up snow and then ski down easily..

Advantage of blades is they are easy to carry on your back.

friends dont let friends use blades

It’s the only type of skiing I’ve ever done. Not that I was any good at it but telemarking looks superb when done by a skilled person.

i thought this was gonna be about cunnilingus 🙁

I took up telemarking a few years ago and never looked back. Its more technical than alpine, but more graceful, rewarding and – if I am honest – it gets you noticed on the slopes.

It took me about 1 week to get pretty good at it (after 28 years of being an alpine skier), and I would say I have now had a total of 6 weeks on telemark skis and I am now fairly comfortable in moguls etc., but with plenty more to learn.

I got instruction on a specific telemark ski holiday and then picked it up further by watching.

Best thing to do is book a weeks intensive ski holiday with a telemark group and hire some gear. I bought my own telemark gear as opposed to ski mountaineering gear as ski mountaneering gear doesnt allow you to ski free-heel down the slopes. It cost me about £250 for the boots, £300 for the skis and £150 for the bindings so not cheap! However, I think you can probably hire the whole lot for about £100-£150 for a week away.

braemar mountain sports (in braemar and aviemore, and online) is a place you can hire equipment in the UK (and take it abroad or onto the scottish ski slopes) – just give them a phone.

For a telemark ski holiday – try these:
telemark ski company
I have not been with them, but I believe they are pretty good. The company I went with no longer does tele ski holidays, so now I am part of a group of telemarkers that go on holiday once a year and simply learn from each other.

Good luck!

Ooh! I got shown how to do this a few years ago in Norway! TBH it was my first (and only) time ski-ing, so I din’t really become all that proficient. I have no experience with fixed heel bindings, so was learning XC techniques. In skis barely more than an inch wide, so praps not ideal kit for a beginner. Was fun though, and felt quite ‘natural’, if that makes any sense, as your foot can move about a bit. I was using some ancient 3-pin bindings, with a pair of just-too-small shoes which were like lightweight leather trainers. I think some feeling is starting to come back to my toes…

Looks very fluid and smooth when an expert is doing it. I don’t think I quite cracked it tbh. 😳

Do you want to tele, or do you want to tour? If you want to tour – ie cover distance in the snow – then let’s get alpine touring kit (as suggested by others) out of the way for a start. Yes it lets you lift your heels for the climb, but the hinge is in front of your toe (rather than flexing at the ball of your foot as with nordic kit), which isn’t that great for going uphill, and is really rubbish on the flat. You only want alpine touring kit if your aim is to get up the hills somehow on a set of skis with the sole aim of skiing the downs heel down alpine style – to use a MTB analogy it’s like pushing a big rig up the hill rather than using a ski resort uplift. If you want to actually enjoy the climbs and the flat a bit then you want nordic kit of some variety – there being a wide range all the way from skinny track racing skis up to stuff which is pretty similar to alpine kit but lets you lift your heel in a natural way. We then come back to telemarking, given that if you learn the skills you can do pretty much anything on telemark kit you can on alpine kit – personally I’ll never own alpine touring kit as I can tele anything I’d need to, and the experience other than skiing down is just so much better.

As others have said, if you want to learn to tele then you can get kit in all resorts – I’ve hired kit in various resorts in France, JH in the USA as well as in Norway (really must get round to buying some full on downhill telemark kit, given if I did go lift skiing again it would be just teleing). As with all things you really need to get some decent instruction though.

However teleing on the downs is just one part of the skillset required for getting about on nordic skis – and unless you’re really just into the downs, probably one of the least important. For just playing about on skis in the UK, what’s far more important is XC skiing skills, for which you want to get yourself out to Norway on a beginners course – or maybe if you live in London go and do some rollerskiing http://www.rollerski.co.uk/

…I do always wonder why so many mountain bikers who like doing XC rather than lift assisted downhill only go alpine skiing rather than having a go at XC skiing – which has so many more similarities to XC MTB.

Telemark and Alpine touring gear is getting lighter with time. I think a Dynafit Alpine set-up is the lightest you can get, but other than that it is pretty much evens with regard to weight.

IMO tele boots are more comfortable to walk in. If you ski tour in Scotland, you will be walking at some point, and maybe even riding a bike. For me this is an important factor.

A good tele skier can ski anything a good alpine skier can, so again this makes no difference.

I went straight to tele from snowboarding. No lessons, just Paul Parker’s book. It took me six weekends to become proficient (rope tow at Glencoe to any Scottish piste), but I’m still learning today, 8 years later.

Tele is not ‘hard’ to learn, but works you to ski. You’ll never be cold as your thighs will generate massive amounts of heat. Tele skiing feels great, and Parker’s book explains how it feels, so when you reach that point, you know you’re getting it.

You will LOVE it.

Blimey aracer- sounds bewildering!

What sort of kit was I using?

Shoes were like these:

Ski fittings like these:

The skis were 40mm wide max! Proper scary at first. Very flexible too. Once I was used to it, the movement felt really quite natural, a bit like skating. It’s a really cool feeling, just gliding along, and once you get in the groove, it feels quite effortless.

3-year old kiddies will show you up though, and look at you with disdain and contempt. 😳

Double post.

What’s up with this forum lately? Seems to be a bit cranky. Server issues?

That’s really old fashioned track skiing kit, elf – modern skis are similar, but the bindings are much narrower and lighter (my metal edged touring skis have bindings like that and hardcore piste only tele skis are also compatible with those boots!) I’m assuming almost completely straight skis without metal edges? Really only good in cut tracks in proper resorts or on flattish untracked snow, as it’s extremely hard to turn on the downs and you have no grip at all if it’s icy – I can do rubbish skiddy teles on mine on a hard packed piste, but in soft snow it’s just kick turns or step turns. Having said that I have done most of my skiing in this country on similar kit.

Apologies elf – there is just so much variety in free heel kit. I used 6 different pairs of skis last year and 5 of those are narrow track skis (though admittedly that’s largely because I use “rock” skis in this country, old ones I don’t mind getting damaged, whilst I have 2 pairs of superlight race skis which only get used abroad). I could own 4 or 5 more sets of kit to cover all the ground between fast touring kit mainly for speed on the flats, gradually increasing in turning ability right up to piste only tele kit.

Qwerty – me too, the punchline to a joke about Paul McArtney and his ex wife…

Aracer; I can’t remember if the skis had metal edges or not. Basically, some kit was found that would fit me, and that’s all there was! Apparently it was racing kit that my GF’s brother in Law had spare, but it was pretty old even then. So, not really all that ideal for a beginner! Mind you, I think I did ok really considering. By the second day, I was managing some nice sweepy turns down a reasonably gentle slope (that little ‘uns were flinging themselves down at incredible speeds), and I did pick up the basic sliding movement very quickly. I was quite pleased with myself actually. Other Norwegian folk seemed quite impressed I was learning to ski on quite specialist equipment. The narrow skis did feel pretty unstable at first.

I did feel I’d probably prefer XC to downhill skiing really. Gentler and you actually get to travel about, rather than just going down then having to get the lift up again. It felt more like ‘proper’ skiing.

Cheers folks – some great posts, esp aracer & STS.

What I’ve always wanted to do is cover distance – through the woods, uphill, downhill, etc, but not on the silly skinny competition skis that you see in the Winter Olympic Nordic events.

Funnily enough, I’ve always been really good at “skating” my alpine skis – often to the annoyance of group companions when it comes to getting a quick start or avoiding punting accross flat sections. Always put it down to being long legged and relatively strong.

Don’t get overly worked up by how narrow the competition skis are. All track skis are that narrow, and you see all sorts skiing on them from little kids right up to OAPs. Really not actually that hard to balance on – no more so than balancing on any sort of skis, and it’s surprising what you can get down on them provided you don’t try to turn. As I mentioned above, I’ve done lots of skiing in this country on those – if you’re looking to pick up cheap s/h kit they are a lot cheaper to buy than anything else (my top of the range race setup – the same as the pros were using at the time – cost less to buy than a typical beginners alpine package).

For going off the beaten trail through the woods etc. what you ideally want though is a “backcountry” setup. As I mentioned before, size and shape of ski and weight of boots depends on whether your priority is about covering ground or making turns on the downs (rather like the variety you get in bikes from XC to all mountain). If I was going to get a new set of kit now for this sort of thing, I’d probably go for Madshus Glittertinds with Salomon XA8 boots, which is biased towards the covering ground end (that’s based on comments I’ve seen rather than stuff I own – I actually own longer straighter skis and old-fashioned heavier boots) – should give you an idea if you want to google.

if you’re wanting to try either ski mountaineering or telemark in scotland try Nick or Mike at G2outdoor in Aviemore. they can give you a taste of both if you like. phone number is 01479 811008.

p.s. as someone said above tele boots are the most comfy of the lot so worth considering if you hate having cold feet!

I just bought some Hagan X-trace skis with Salomon X-ADV6 boots and bindings for XC/gentle touring at lower levels or for on the Cairngorm Plateau when it isn’t all about the steeps. They sound like the kind of thing you might be looking for.

FAR harder to turn than my tele set up (Movement Freeheels with G3 Targa bindings and Garmont Squadra boots).

Pretty similar to my suggestion, though looking at the specs they’re a bit wider at the waist, hence less sidecut. Of course they don’t turn as well as proper tele kit – the nordic camber and lack of sidecut makes it harder to make the skis turn and you can’t crank them hard with those boots. More than made up for by the versatility IMHO, and doing teles on kit like that is an art which is very satisfying when you get it right (not that I’d claim to be able to very often!)