La Clusaz
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Telemark Skiing, The Basics.
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Years ago whilst on holiday in La
Clusaz, I was skiing on a red mogul field, and decided to stop to work
out a good route for the next stage, when two people flew past me using
a style that I had not seen before. It later turned out that they were
local girls who had won many telemark titles. The sight of these two
gliding effortlessly down and around those moguls in the style I later
learnt was telemarking, really blew me away. Although I decided then
and there to give it a go, it was many years before I got the
opportunity. I went to a local hire shop and bought a set of second hand plastic boots and telemark skis. Not having the money to pay for private lessons, (there weren’t too many people learning in the area to form a group), I then had to embark on the difficult task of teaching myself. As an engineer, I concentrated on what the ski was doing, and how to make it do what I wanted. And as a result, I found that I had enough ideas to put together a regime to convert alpine skiers to Telemark. So, these are the rantings of a self taught telemark instructor, trying to explain the principles of what is needed to ski like a pro. Obviously start by finding a telemark hire shop, there are some shops that still hire out old leather boots and thin skis, avoid these like the plague. Get some decent plastic boots and modern skis, they’re not too dissimilar to the carving skis used by alpine skiers today. There are a number of different sorts of bindings, your hire shop will show you how they work. 1. Equipment.  Boots can be leather or plastic, and are similar to normal alpine boots, but with the exception of having a flexible toe, and a toe piece which enables the boot to be fixed into telemark bindings.  Skis are similar to normal alpine skis, but are manufactured to be lighter and have a softer flex.  Bindings, this is where things change radically. Telemark bindings have a front piece which mates with the toe piece of a telemark boot, and normally a cable which runs around the back of the boot, and includes some sort of spring in order to provide a simple release mechanism. A friction block under the heel completes the setup. 2. First Steps. Start on a beginners slope, you should be able to handle the drag lift in the same way as you would with alpine skis. The principles of telemark skiing are identical to alpine skiing, in that all is needed is to put the skis on an edge and weight them, the ski will bend and result in a turn. Just remember that if you get into trouble, you can always adopt the good old snow plough. The telemark position is with the downhill ski forward
and the uphill ski behind, with the heel raised. A point of explanation
here, the reason that the telemark position is used, is to put your
weight well behind your forward foot, this will give you a certain
amount of give during deceleration. In the alpine position with
telemark bindings any deceleration would throw you over the front of
your skis and you’d end up eating snow. So, in the telemark position, traverse the slope, and at the end of the traverse, stand up on your skis and snowplough to a stop. When you’ve done this a couple of times, use the snowplough to turn onto the opposite traverse, and drop into the telemark position after the turn, remember the downhill ski goes forward and the uphill ski back with the heel raised. Use your poles to balance. Weight the skis equally i.e. 50/50, and try to keep them parallel during the traverse. The weight down through your front leg should be equally through the sole of that foot, i.e. no tendancy to lean back or forward, and through your toes of the back foot. Your uphill knee should be in a line behind back of your downhill calf, but not tucked in. As a beginner you may tend to stand with too much weight
on the front ski, and bring the back ski forward so that your knees are
too close, or you may be too open, with a big gap between your knees,
this can result in the back ski sliding across the rear of your front,
downhill ski. A strange situation to be in and you’ll know
when it happens.
As you get used to the style, try dropping into the telemark position earlier and earlier when leaving the turn. Now lets work on the style. During the traverse, we need to angulate, & rotate our body. Due to the skis being in the opposite sense of a normal alpine stance, this rotation needs to be very positive. The pole & arm position are also important, try and keep your uphill arm from lagging behind because this will affect the position of your shoulders, turning you to face up the fall line. Concentrate on bringing your uphill arm around to point down the fall line. Now at the end of your snowplough turns, reverse your angulation to set the skis edges, and counter rotate to assist the turn as you drop back into the telemark position. This angulation and counter rotation is very important, and we will need to practise this in order to develop the proper telemark turn.
Now that you’ve got used to the equipment and basic telemark skiing, its time to consider the actual telemark turn. This is where things get a bit difficult. I have seen a lot of telemark skiers who have got stuck at this point and are unable to develop the turn and improve their skiing to more demanding slopes and off piste. At this point it helps to understand what is going on in a turn. Turns consist of two parts. The first is changing the edge, and the Second is the actual change of direction, which is the result of the edge change, weighting and centrifugal forces. Changing the edge on telemark skis is accomplished by bringing the rear ski forward and changing to the opposite angulation, at this point you need to weight the ski to get it to bend, then centrifugal forces will force the ski to keep bending the correct way and the turn will start, as this happens, counter rotate to assist the turn, so that your are again facing down the fall line. Now for a point that I took a long time to notice, and I don’t think it has been documented before, but is one of the most important things about telemark skiing which keeps people from progressing. The plateau! There is a very subtle but big difference between our turns up to now and a proper telemark turn. If you could video yourself in slow motion during a turn you would see that as you bring your rear foot forward, and at the point that your feet pass each other, there will be a small pause and both heels will be down on the bindings. This is a result in standing up during the start of the turn. In a true telemark turn at this point both heels are raised and there is no pause. This is not possible if you stand too upright on your skis, try to keep in the telemark position through the turn, keeping your weight low also improves stability as it lowers your centre of gravity. It also helps if you increase the weight on your rear ski at the start and drive it forward to commence the turn, remember, try not to stand up, keep low.
This is just the start of the turn. Now as you bring your rear ski forward, you will need to change your angulation (which will change the edge) and as you weight the ski, it will bend and start to turn in front of you, as it does, counter rotate and go with it. This completes the telemark turn. With upweighting (which does not mean standing up), this difference gives you the ability to make very quick telemark turns, which are needed on steeper slopes and moguls. Remember, instead of pausing when your feet are together during a turn, try putting a lot of force on the rear ski bringing it forward straight past the other ski in one movement, - think about kicking a football -, as your feet pass each other, both your heels should be raised. During the turn remember to think about opposite angulation and counter rotation, and remember to bring your uphill arm around. Now we can do proper telemark turns, the next step is to get used to different skiing requirements. There are two basic types of turn, for all types of skiing, I call these inefficient or skidding turns, which are useful for getting down steep slopes and loosing speed, and efficient or carving turns for maintaining speed. Inefficient or skidding turns require a lot of counter rotation and angulation as well as up weighting. Whilst efficient or carving turns are less strenuous, and the edge change is slower. Try practicing these on different gradients. 3. Telemark skiing is very tiring
on the legs and knees, and during long days, I tend to revert to the
alpine style on the easier runs. But, beware of skiing like this in
inconsistent snow, because if you come across wet or cruddy conditions,
you should immediately get into the telemark position, or you will be
kissing the snow. This is because in the alpine position you have no
way of countering a sudden reduction of speed without rotating over
your toes. Whereas in the telemark position you are well behind any
tendency to rotate forward, and can absorb a good deal more
deceleration. |
© Snowlog 2005.