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Telemark Skiing on "Shorts"Getting Back to Our Roots By Ed Hale Real skiing is changing. The long of it is tough, but the short of it is easy — so easy, that it's self-teaching.
First, let's define real skiing, which I teach at Whiteface Mountain. In my opinion, it's done with a free heel so you can go uphill, downhill or crosshill, with equal ease. Such freedom allows you to kneel, stride, ski heels down or with one up. Whoooosh...there goes a real skier who can slide anywhere — on the groomed, through the woods or the backcountry. If you discount Stone Age sliding, Sondre Norheim started it all in the mid-19th Century in Norway's county of Telemark. The young farmer blasted off a ski jump with free heels and landed with one of them raised. Thus, the Telemark stance was born. Good ol' Sondre later gathered a group of his fellow Telemarkers, skied down to Christiana (now Oslo) and showed the city folk their sweeping free-heel turn. Next, they showed their countrymen a short sliding, flat-footed uphill turn which became known as the Christiana. And that evolved into the skidded christie. There you have it: the Nordic origin of modern skiing as a sport of the people — before the Alpine nations made it big business for the masses with stems so beginners could snowplow down Alpine slopes. So an Alpine skier can get back to the sport's modern roots simply by lifting a heel. And the learning process can be as short as a day if learning on short skis and perhaps a week if learning on long ones. I've spent 70 to 80 days over the past two winters fooling around with short Tele skis. I first mounted three-pin bindings on 90-centimeter skis, which were wider than my boot. But I had little success edging the rear ski and it wandered across the back of my front ski. Next, I mounted pin bindings on 113-centimeter RD Coyotes and experienced joy. I used the Coyote for teaching Alpine skiing in Ski School Director Ed Kreil's Parallel-from-the-Start program, which puts neophytes on 90-centimeter Salomon Blades and gets most of them on green-blue terrain in a day or two. And, to my delight, I found my Tele version to be self-teaching. For example, I soon learned to pressure my big- and little-toe edges without any foot twisting. If you use rotary movements or fail to tip your skis, the Coyotes quiver, tremble, wobble or oscillate. And, if you don't weight the back foot's little toe or let your knees separate too widely fore and aft, the rear ski will cross behind your lead foot. Moreover the short boards give you a feeling of freedom — to jump or ski backwards or skate, you name it. They work in remarkably diverse conditions in both Alpine and Nordic modes. I've used them in slush, mud and ice. Deep snow, though, is tough. The most pleasurable short ski I've used, however, is the 130-centimeter Rossignol Development (Stage 1) Cut, used in the Whiteface graduated-length Alpine-teaching program. The Cuts are a shaped ski — 106 millimeters at the tip, 70 mm at the waist and 96 mm at the tail. I put Rainey free-heel bindings on them atop a 25-millimeter lifter. Wow, the 130s were great! So I ignored my trusty 190s and used the Cuts most of last March. When Whiteface closed its lifts in early April, I climbed the mountain and skied happily on them into May. Spring moguls, moreover, became a pleasure. The 130 Cuts made this lousy bump skier's feet dance. I spent delightful hours skimming mogul-ridge lines under the pale April sun. And I found them stable at cruising speeds. Obviously, though, they're not racing skis or meant for mogul zipper lines. A warning: Tele skiing puts a lot of torque on the toe plate, especially with big plastic boots. Thus, I pulled the binding screws out of one ski or the other a couple of times (which helped my one-legged downhill technique, but not my disposition). The Whiteface ski shop, however, installed some six screws in each toe plate (possible with the Rainey lifter). That solved the problem. This season, Whiteface has introducing the Tele-teaching program using rental 130-centimeter Rossignol Cuts. They'll use tried-and-true PSIA methods stressing Tele garlands and rear-foot pressure and edging. Short Tele skis make it easy with their agility and foot sensitivity. One useful Tele garland works like this: traverse, with uphill ski (and, of course, uphill body components) leading. Pull uphill ski back as you shift weight to it and flex to Tele stance (think back foot, little toe). As you start to stall in the uphill turn, extend and push weighted back (uphill) foot forward (it flattens then changes to big toe edge) and you head toward fall line. Before skis point downhill, flex to Tele stance, flattening, then changing to the little-toe edge of the uphill ski. Repeat these moves in similar garlands. As you make the garlands, think of pressuring the uphill ski and concentrate on the edge changes from the little toe to the big-toe side (and vice versa) as you arc the pressured uphill ski backward and forward. Work on smoothing out that move for a run or two. Then make the full turn into the fall line at the end of each across-the-hill garland. And soon you'll be saying, "By George, I've Got It!" For the 2000-2001 season, I've bought a wildly shaped (106-63-95) Tua ski that's only 163 centimeters long. And that's my long ski. My short ski will be the 130 Cut. For me, that's the long and short of it. And it's a quick way to get back to modern skiing's free-heel roots, put down by Sondre Norheim almost 150 years ago. For more information on telemark skiing, contact Whiteface Mountain (518) 946-2223 / www.whiteface.com; the Professioinal Ski Instructors of America — Eastern Division (518) 452-6095 / www.psia-e.org; or the North American Telemark Organization (800) 835-3404 / www.telemarknato.com.
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