Telemark ski club races locally

Those free-heel skiers carving into the powder at Snowbowl this winter aren’t just crazy. They are telemark skiing – the latest snowsport taking over Montana slopes and the backcountry.

Telemark is a type of turn, where one ski is in front of the other, and the heel is raised on the rear ski with the skier bent at the knee, according to Todd Frank, owner of the Missoula gear store Trail Head.

“Basically the boot flexes at the ball of the foot,” Frank said. “It sort of makes one long ski out of two. It’s basically reinvented alpine skiing.”

Frank, a graduate of the University of Montana, has been tearing up the slopes on telemark skis since 1982. He said he made the transition from alpine skiing because telemarking allowed him to get out into the backcountry without having to pay for a lift ticket and the gear was more comfortable.

“It’s ‘back to the basics’ as it was described to me,” he said. “(Telemark) is an outgrowth of the whole hippie-backpacking culture of the ’70s in the U.S. The equipment was pretty primitive. All of a sudden the whole experience of skiing was a lot more fun.”

Despite the new wave of popularity, telemark, tele or free-heel skiing as it is sometimes called, can be traced back to the late 1800s to a skier named Sondre Norheim from Telemark, Norway, according to telemarktips.com. Norheim is credited with crafting the telemark turn.

This tricky technique allows free access to backcountry terrain unavailable to alpine skiers. Armed with a pair of climbing skins – made from nylon or mohair and adhered to the bottom of skis for uphill climbing traction – tele skiers can get out of the resort and into the wild.

“My goal is to use it to get into the mountains,” said Kaylie McNamara, a California native getting her teaching credential in biology at UM. She started telemark lessons at Snowbowl six weeks ago.

“You can be on more variable terrain than most other modes of snow travel,” McNamara said. 

Along with backcountry, fluidity and grace are words often used to describe telemark skiing.

“It’s like the difference between going ballroom dancing and playing football,” Frank said. “You put on all your alpine gear to go out and do battle with the mountain – it’s aggressive, like attacking slope. Tele gear is quiet, dynamic, fluid.”

For some, telemark skiing is just more instinctive. Dave Craig, a graduate student in the UM College of Forestry, was an alpine skier for eight years before he tried telemark.

“There was something traditional about tele since it was the first kind of skiing,” Craig said. “I enjoy the sense of freedom of movement; it feels a lot more natural to me than alpine ever did.” Craig has been tele skiing for seven years and is a member of the Fighting Chickens telemark race team. He is one of about 100 skiers that flock to Snowbowl on Thursday evenings for races.

Races are put on by the Trail Head and begin around 7:30 p.m. News and updates are posted at http://www.trailheadmontana.net.

In 2002, a strong interest in telemark racing led former UM students to start a telemark club on campus.

“I believe it was Natalie Angell and some fellow teleskiers who had been involved with some serious race circuits through high school and wanted to continue during their college years,” said current club president Carson Baughman. Baughman is a senior ecology major at UM and has been telemark skiing for five years.

“I saw it as a way to fuse my love of cross-country skiing, which took me into the peaceful and wild reaches of my local wilderness, with the thrill of downhill skiing,” he said.

Baughman said the club currently has close to 50 registered members and meets once a month, usually at someone’s house for an informal potluck dinner. The club tries to host one organized trip per semester. He said they usually head out during President’s Day Weekend (Feb. 18 this year) for a few days of backcountry skiing.

The club does not provide any formal instruction, he said, but anyone is welcome to attend trips regardless of skill, as long as they are comfortable with learning in the field. For questions or more information about the UM Telemark Club, contact Baughman at carsonbaughman@hotmail.com
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For those interested in learning the thrills and techniques of telemark, Snowbowl offers daily group and private lessons (http://www.montanasnowbowl.com).

“Don’t just go up with friends and assume,” Frank said. “Make sure they have some background in telemark, and rent or borrow good equipment.”