Telemark x Alpine

Question
Hi Ron, how are you?

I just started recently learning how to ski and once I saw a guy temarking on the slopes and it totally grabbed my attention.

I watched a DVD on telemarking and seeing the guys easily skiing down slopes among the trees totally sold the idea to me, as well as the freestyle jumps.

My question is: as a beginner should I dive into the teleamrk skiing or should I stick to the Alpine skiing? What are the disadvantages of Telemark skiing?

Thank you so much for your time!

Answer
Hi Guilherme, thanks for the question- sorry for the delay in responding.

Telemarking is really an awesome way to see the mountain, especially off-trail and on a powder day. It does present some added challenges to skiing, however.

It is not that telemark skiing is much more difficult than alpine (in fact, it's pretty easy to pick up), but tele does call upon a broader range of muscles- while I can alpine ski all day, I can only tele for a couple of hours before I'm really fatigued. Usually it is my quads that feel it.

Many resorts around us offer telemark camps and clinics- Park City Mountain Resort offers Telemark-Tuesdays, where whole groups of skiers spend the day learning to telemark at a comfortable pace. Tele-skiing is so much more social- especially when you get skins and earn your turns by hiking up the mountain first.

Athleticism aside, the only other real obstacle you face in entering telemark skiing is finding a good source for your gear. Your boots, for instance, will fit and flex much differently than an alpine boot, and you'll need a good telemark boot fitter to help you avoid hot-spots and abrasions. The ski you choose will have a significant effect on your tele experience, as will the binding. Getting the right combination of ski, boot and binding, not just as a beginning telemark skier, but so that you can evolve in the direction you wish to go, is important.

If you don't mind the added exercise, and the knowledge that you may flounder around a bit at first, I highly recommend going the tele-route... and if this helps at all, my 11 year old son says that he gets tons of attention from the girls on the hill, who think it is so cool that he tele's.