| Going
for the burn: The New Telemarking
by
Jack Kintner
The
Roots of Telemark
Two old men paused to look at a pair of skis leaning up
against the rack at a local ski shop. They smiled as they
ran their hands over the smooth solid hickory and lightly
rusted “bear trap” bindings set well back,
and poles with baskets big enough to be real baskets.
Fifty years ago such equipment was de rigueur all over
Europe and North America, including Mt. Baker and in B.C.,
since skiers in those days spent as much or more time climbing
and traversing as going downhill, and most runs were not
groomed.
The mobility skis provided in winter travel in the mountains,
especially compared to snowshoes, made them standard government
issue (GI) for men in the famed Tenth Mountain Division,
a group that formed the core of the post-WWII boom in the
recreational ski industry. To buy equipment in those days
often meant either visiting the local Army-Navy Surplus
store or working through an association such as the Seattle
Mountaineers, a club that began in 1907 sponsoring two
and three-week summer outings into various places that
have since become national parks. Such outings always included
the ascent of several peaks, using equipment that today
looks to be as much a hindrance as a help, such as the
long bloomers worn by women or the long “alpenstock” poles
used as a climbing (and skiing) aid instead of alpine-style
ice axes.
But an independent group of climbers within the Mountaineers
who were looking for better equipment like ice axes, available
then only in Europe, formed a purchasing cooperative in
1939. After WW II the word spread quickly, and in by the
time it incorporated in 1956 the original group of 27 had
grown into the thousands with their own retail store, a
second floor walk-up at 6th and Pike streets in Seattle.
This became what is now known as the Recreational Equipment
Cooperative, or REI, whose rapid expansion in the past
50 years reflects the dramatic growth that has occurred
in outdoor recreation, spurred by advances in equipment
only dreamed of a century ago. But though materials have
changed, in some respects the basic designs have remained
the same.
It was in the 1950s, when more and better ski lifts began
to appear, that ski equipment began to specialize. Such
things as metal edges on skis (and metal-clad laminated
wood skis such as early Heads and Harts), “safety” bindings
that release when a skier falls down and plastic boots
that clamp shut to help in edge control down to the present-day
popularity of snowboards and exaggerated contoured skis
that practically make the turns for you all became more
popular as ski lifts did more and more of the work of climbing.
The revolution in equipment brought dramatic growth to
the industry as the number of ski areas grew from 78 in
1955 (including Mt. Baker) to nearly 700 just 10 years
later. In fact, it’s one of Baker’s strong
points for many skiers both that it has such historic roots
and, except for the addition of new lifts and more terrain,
has remained relatively unchanged since the first lift,
chair 1, was installed and put into use in 1954.
The old skis these two old men saw can be seen at the Glacier
Ski Shop and also nailed to the wall at Graham’s
Restaurant across the street. There you can see pictures
of what skiing was like before ski lifts. The sport had
changed little from its early beginnings, traceable through
relics dug from Swedish bogs and to Russian cave drawings
of skiers thousands of years old, to the mid-nineteenth
century, when Sondre Norheim and others from the Telemark
Plateau in Norway began to invent and use what became modern
ski equipment.
Modern Alpine Touring
and Telemark Skiing
With the popularity of backcountry travel, things have
come full circle from the early days, and two kinds of
backcountry set-ups are now in widespread use. One is Alpine
Touring (AT), sometimes called Radonneur, which means “excursion” in
French. Such equipment is designed primarily for climbing
and descending, and typically involves bindings that can
be locked into place like a normal downhill or alpine binding
or released at the heel to hinge forward for climbing.
The sole of the boot remains fixed into a rigid position
as the pivot point is a part of the binding, an inch or
so in front of the skier’s toe.
Climbing is usually done either with “herring-bone” steps,
tips pointed outward at a 45-degree angle, or with skins
fastened to the bottom of the skis. “Skins” were
once real animal skins, usually beaver, but today are strips
of synthetic material that will grip in one direction (to
prevent the ski from going backwards) and slide in the
other (forward).
Telemark is really more a description of a technique than
a style of equipment, according to John Adams of the Glacier
Ski Shop. The bindings are contemporary versions of the
old army skis, though instead of using “box-toe” boots
held in place by leather straps, modern Telemark boots
are plastic, and look much like lighter versions of alpine
boots. Heel straps are either rigid rods or flexible cable,
for groomed or ungroomed slopes respectively, and both
employ strong springs to force the boot forward into the
toe piece.
Telemark skiing originated in the second half of the 19th
century in the Telemark plateau north of Oslo, Norway,
pioneered by the potato farmer and ski equipment innovator
Sondre Norheim. Before then skiers usually steered with
a lurk, an eight to 10 foot pole that is held horizontally
in both hands and is drug to the inside of an intended
turn. An added benefit of this technique, and one reason
it is also making its own comeback, is that it helps to
orient the skier naturally to face down the fall line,
the line a ball would take if it were to roll down the
slope.
Norheim and his contemporaries were the first to introduce
such things as a side contour to skis and bindings that
helped the skier to both point the skis more accurately
and tilt the skis for better edge control and more effective
turning. This is still the basis of what’s known
as dynamic control in skiing, the ability to steer the
skis themselves as opposed to simply riding on them and
steering by dragging a lurk, or long pole.
Norheim’s key invention was to improve upon the simple
toe strap binding by adding a heel strap that forced the
toe forward into the front binding. His “Telemark” heel
strap was made of birch root tendrils that had a certain
amount of springiness to them that not only held the ski
firmly enough so the skier could maneuver or jump without
losing the ski, the more the heel was raised the more the
pressure forward “loaded” the ski for greater
control downhill.
At a contest in Christiana, Norway, in 1868, Norheim and
his friends demonstrated turns that either were long and
carved or that were fairly quick and ended with the skier
stopped and pointed slightly uphill. The first was named
for where they came from and is still called a Telemark
turn, and the second was named for the town where the contest
was held, since shortened to “Christie” in
the 50’s.
Adams said that maybe half of the local Glacier skiers
are using modern Telemark equipment now, “and it’s
kind of a work-out, so you don’t see it used as much
by the weekend warriors,” he said. The idea is to
gain fore-and-aft balance in the turn by dragging your
inside ski back behind the outside ski and locking it against
the back part of your boot, making both skis into a single
curve that’s almost twice as long – and therefore
more effective – than skis held parallel.
That’s what gives the turn its distinctive look,
with the skier seemingly frozen into a high-hurdler’s
position as he or she then leans gracefully into a long,
carved and fast turn.
“It always gets back to equipment,” Adams said, “since
what’s propelling the popularity now of this technique
are the plastic Telemark boots that give you a lot more
edge control that the old low-top leather boots could.”
Though not yet an Olympic event, there is a World Cup for
Telemark-equipped competitors, and like snowboarding 20
years ago, it’s a new direction to take on the slopes
whose popularity is growing
rapidly.
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