Homeboy’s Skiing Blog

“Piss off your old alpine race coach… lean back, lean in, rotate your upper body and smoke lots of weed.” -”cuseo” on TGR forum

First off, I’m a newbie telemarker. Secondly, I don’t smoke alot of weed. Thirdly, I wonder if that statement was about powder riding with teles? Because in the groomed slope it seems like it is even more essential than on alpines to use your hips, stay square to the fall line and even use the old school counter-rotation to keeps those edges carving (= just what your old race coach might have teached!).

Well, I still wait to get that first real tele experince on powder snow though. I’ll try to remember that advice then…it surely sounds fun, heh.

Ok, what I’ve been doing lately is trying to learn tele turns.It has been quite fun and addictive! And I think I’m advanced quite alot in a few weeks. And lots of it does to do with gear, after all (IMHO). I still point out that I am novice at this tele thing, so take these note as such…

You can find the essential info of the reviewer from our latest gear review article. The conditions have been variable but basically all spring type snow: from perfect corn snow to (refrozen) hard groomers with ice chunks here and there.

1. Boots - Scarpa T-1 Thermo

(Image source: www.varuste.net)

A boot review is kind of an oxymoron. Buy a boot that fits and if nothing fits, take the one that causes the least pain and walk to a nearest specialized bootfitter.

Ok, I still want to say a few words about (tele) boots. In telemark the boot choice is maybe a bit more crucial because the type of the boot you choose affects quite alot to your skiing: take a low cuff (xc-oriented) leather touring boots and try to match it to your new fat skis. Or try to ski a long flat approach wearing a pair of high downhill oriented plastic boots…

See what I mean? Of course there is the school of purists that requires everyone taking a pair of tooth -pick skinny long touring skis, a pair of leather boots and nordic bindings. Stating that otherwise you wouldn’t learn “proper” or “right” tele technique.

I might be wrong but I call BS on that kind of thinking. Choosing your gear for its intended purpose is another thing but if you want to get downhill performance: choose burly, downhill oriented gear. (do’h - sounds pretty wise, does it…)

So, I tried some Garmonts and the heel lifted, way too wide heel area. Scarpas were right from the beginning and felt pretty stiff and powerfull too. And, dang, what happened to my skiing - I found that inside ski, that magic “little toe” and the mystic tele turns didn’t felt that mystic to me anymore.

Is that cheating? Maybe but I have 95mm waisted skis too and sturdiest cable bindings you can find…it was pretty stupid to try to match that with sloppy boots. (My former boots were also Scarpas. T-race’s from like 6-7 years back. I got the boots free from a friend. No wonder because thinking it now, the front “hinge”/bellows of the boots were so soft that I could have skied in leather boots as well…)

So that’s it about the boots. They are burly, stiff, maybe a tad heavy for tours. And, yes, alpine turns are no hassle with them. I think I could ski the new Scarpa T1’s and R8’s everywhere, I’d just use alpine turns on sketchy places…I have no shame to admit that. In my opinion there isn’t actually anything wrong with alpine turns on teles. I think you should just use whatever technique works and feels the best for the given conditions and purpose. I like the term “freeheel skiing” - it is just skiing with a bit different gear, right?

2. Bindings - Rottefella Cobra R8

Well, I haven’t tried alot of tele bindings. And the ones I’ve tried earlier have been old school cable bindings (e.g. Riva Z’s).

NTN(New Telemark Norm) might change the world of tele-bindings but until it has been tested and proved a few year, I guess you can’t go wrong with these.

Rottefella R8 is said to be on the “active” side (see some explanation here) but not the most active on the market. I like that because at the moment I like to keep my tele stance fairly upright, not letting that rear ski too far back (and loosing all the pressure from the edge). I might be on the edge of “fake-a-marking” it (again, see explanation from this thread) but I don’t care as long as the turn carves and feels good. I have been adviced that strong alpine skiers tend to like fairly active tele bindings and at the moment I agree on that. Let’s see how it evaluates…they send that the squat will get deeper as you find the joys of “real” t-turn. Well, we’ll see.

Also, I feel that adjusting the lenght of the cable affect significantly on the active-neutral scale. Let the cable looser and you get more neutral feel and vice versa. Pretty simple, eh. (But I might be talking out of my ass here, as a total newbie. Please correct if I’m wrong?)

3. Skis - K2 Hippy Stinx, 179cm

Nice match of colors…???

This is the older version (04/05) with measurements of 125-95-118mm. Since then they have given a few mm’s more to it and made it a tad straighter and stiffer. The Seth’s pro model’s have gone pretty much the same way, I guess.

I was kind of stupid to sell my old K2 Seth Pistols (they were 189cm though) and buy these at almost the same price. The ski looks and feels quite same. With teles, however, I must admit that I feel better with 179cm’s though. And K2’s 179cm is almost as long as 190cm Völkl Gotama (I guess they’re both essentially around 185cm). So, there’s plenty of ski and flotation, even in 179cm version. I also think that the reinforcements in the tele inserts area stiffens up the ski a little - giving it a bit more girth in the middle. At the moment that works pretty well. Soft tip, stiffer middle and pretty soft tail - a round flex perfect for t-turns. At least these skis are pretty easy to ski, and can still hold a decent carve, even on hard pack. On a really icy stuff with uneven (icy) chunks I was in trouble though. But this is probably due my less than ideal technique more than any other factor.

Ok, that was a few thoughts on tele gear. I am eager to go ski in Finnish Lapland next week and find out if I can fins some softer snow under my Hippy Stinx (Still, I plan to take Alpine skis with me too).

Reports and hopefully some more gear reviews coming, I’ll try to get to test at least a couple of pairs of new skis…

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