Telemark Skiing Is Back–But the Internet Can’t Agree on What It’s Becoming

Some two summers past, delighting in the prospect of a post-mountain bike ride beverage, I took a seat at a high top, and thought about beer as I absent-mindedly surveyed the brewery. But something immediately caught my eye. Double-taking, I noticed a young gentleman the table over wearing something that in years prior could have subjected him to outright scorn and ridicule in any ski town.

Loudly and brightly, the young fellow’s hat read the word “TELEMARK.”

It was both refreshing and stunning. He seemed quite unlike the graying gals and dudes (myself included) I knew who freed the heel on snow–and their inhibitions at Phish or Panic (but never, ever both). In fact he didn’t seem quite like anyone I recognized in the threadbare scene that had long struggled to entice a younger cohort. 

His hat was stylish–of the flat brimmed, five-panel variety. And the gent was fresh-faced; his visage untouched by the march of time that adorns many a telemarker’s face, including my own–crow’s feet.

Someone young and trendy was indeed taking part in the ancient genuflecting turn, and openly declaring it.

Is telemark getting cool again? I thought.

Telemark skiing has indeed come a long way toward acceptability–even renewed respect–and all quite recently. Not long ago I, like many free-heelers of the fraught post-millenium era, was nudged toward eschewing outright free-heel pride. When asked the most classic of questions posed in a ski town when first meeting someone–if I skied or snowboarded–for the better part of a decade, I just said I skied, and left it at that.

The cultural landscape was then a minefield for the free-heeler. Friends willingly threw me under the bus at the opportunity to be in on a stranger’s telemark joke. Random alpine skiers on the same run as me seemed to constantly make a point to try and beat me to the bottom.Thus the modest, retrograde free-heel school of the 2010s I came from relegated the notion of wearing a hat declaring one TELEMARKs fraught at best.  

But something has indeed changed lately.  

Not only has the tele-scorn endemic of the previous generation seemed to abate over the last several years, the telemark scene itself–while still small and insular–appears poised to rise again out of the quiet self-loathing shadows and into a modern, even cool fold. Long ignored by the mainstream ski discourse, Instagram pages of outfits like TELE COLO and skiers Will Houskamp now showcase the leading edge of telemark–both in vibe and execution. Mainstream ski publications (like the one you’re reading) are even covering The Turn again. And with the ascendance of modern gear, the sport finally seems ready to shake the old refrain telemark is dead, a trope first uttered by retailers unable to sell through their free-heel inventory during the sport’s doldrums some twenty years ago. Since then Scarpa has released their long-awaited line of modern telemark boots, pointing to a renewed demand for new telemark gear. Even ATK, the darling of the freetour alpine touring scene, has announced a telemark binding is in the works. The sport seems to be becoming not only a viable business case, but maybe–maybe–even trendy again.

But as telemark appears to be riding a fresh and chic wave, a fitfulness has marked its evolution. Often sarcastic, self-referential, and stylishly self-effacing, the coalescing telemark newschool has brought the modern free-heel vibe to a new generation plugged into both social media and a more ironic sensibility, creating an energy not seen in telemark in years. But the new movement has also been party to a muted yet present divisiveness. At times criticized for neglecting those who blazed the trail ahead of them, the new guard has in turn stood their ground, occasionally scorning a portion of the telemark scene they deem counterrevolutionary to their movement; a cohort they deride as aged, curmudgeonly, cheap, and unwilling to abdicate. 

Regardless, telemark has reawakened, most evidently in this rising new school that has unavoidably been influenced by the late-coming ascendance of a modern telemark gear paradigm.

This revitalized gear landscape sprouted from seeds sown decades before. First brought to life in 2007, the sport’s modern binding platform–the new telemark norm (NTN)–was conceived of as an upgrade to telemark’s eminently skiable but feature-starved binding template; the 75mm wide Nordic norm. NTN allowed not only a stronger edging ability from its underfoot connection, the new platform allowed myriad options that before only alpine skiers had enjoyed. Thos included ski brakes, step-in functionality, release, and the eventual incorporation of the pinnacle of turn-earning features: the tech-toe.

Telemark skiers took their time coming around to the new norm with many 75mm holdouts claiming NTN poorly mimicked the soulful sensation they had long found in duckbilled boots and Nordic norm bindings. While many still feel the elder platform is ascendant for making turns, eventually bindings like 22 Designs’ Outlaw X–the world’s best-selling NTN model–became the choice of many free-heelers, including a younger, hard-skiing subset. The new bindings helped usher in not only a modern gear paradigm, but also a new world view on telemark. Its forgoing of 75mm dogma–often typecast as not just a devotion to a certain binding but also to jambands and a hippie sesnsiblity–influenced a progressive if at times iconoclastic approach that many younger skiers would pick up on via social media. They took to the park and big mountain settings on the aggressive-skiing new telemark norm. In that process, the 75mm holdouts–often cast as luddites–would become the foil against which the new school would define itself. 

“When you go on the forums there’s all these old crotchety dudes who are like ‘75 is the answer’ or ‘I’m only skiing leathers, and blah blah blah blah blah,’” Adam X Sauerwein, amongst the most influential voices in modern telemark media claimed on his Pursuit podcast in September of 2022. “I think telemark skiers are killing their own sports by being crunchy, crotchety old weird, young weird guys, girls, however you identify; you’re all telemark skiers, and you don’t spend enough money on your own sport ” he opined.

Regardless of this schism, the new equipment landscape has finally overtaken the old–and as other innovative binding platforms like the two-pin telemark tech system (TTS) have joined the fray–sales of new telemark equipment have slowly eclipsed the old norm, finally allowing eminent bootmaker Scarpa to come to market with the sport’s first fully modern, AT-comparable telemark boot–a revamped TX Pro. This, and the release of a retooled TX Comp–marks not only the first major update to telemark footwear in nearly two decades, but the ascendance of a modern telemark movement–complete in both gear and culture. 

Like it ever has, telemark moves forward influenced by that duo of factors: equipment innovation and subcultural evolution. While these seemingly unrelated forces can appear to have little in common, they have together been integral to telemark’s cycles of popularity and obscurity.

Much like Scarpa’s introduction of the Terminator in 1993–the original plastic telemark boot–gear innovation has been key to driving telemark commerce, perhaps even participation and in turn further gear development, ever framing the ebbs and flows of the subculture. And while the current free-heel milieu little resembles that of the early nineties, manufacturers in the ski industry still see gear progress as integral to building sales. 

“The big leaps in sales numbers really–I’m going to start with that because I think participation is a different number. Sales are really lifted by new, innovative product,” says Scarpa North America CEO Miller. “And you could go down the list of where something–a big change, not just a brand but a trend; shaped skis, alpine touring features in alpine boots. I use those as two somewhat recent changes. They really helped spike sales in those categories because there was something new to talk about.”  

Miller and Scarpa hope telemark sales are ready to spike in similar fashion on the back of new, modern gear options. And the building scene seems poised to jump at the opportunity, with the new TX Pro selling out last year in its first season of availability.

Other telemark makers also see the scene evolving, in no small part because of the gear landscape. That includes Bishop Telemark–the Edwards, Colorado-based boutique free-heel brand that has long enjoyed a cult following for their modern, aggressive bindings.

Matt Share, until recently the company’s sales and marketing manager, sees a distinct free-heel newschool evolving. A forward-thinking veteran of the software services industry, Share’s scant few years of exposure to the sport brought a fresh perspective to Bishop, a firm that sees the new gear paradigm and evolving subculture as inextricably linked.

“Being the newbie and getting the lay of the land I’d say I’m not bogged down by the history and past-protection and all that stuff,” Share says. “It seems like it’s still graduating from the old school to the new school, empowered by the tech, right? The tech now has changed the sport where you really can do everything that you can do on alpine or maybe more,” he continues, hinting at the newschool’s desire for telemark to evolve into something less esoteric, something more relatable, and–for the retailers and manufacturers–something more marketable. 

Share’s perspective encapsulates a telemark world that is not only finally trending younger, but seems unencumbered by a deference to the sport’s history–telemark’s scant record often leaving that narrative struggling for modern acknowledgement. But that gap has little deterred–perhaps even aided–the ascendance telemark’s fresher vibe amongst a younger cohort.

“I think that’s why the new generation is drawn to it–there’s the style of it, it’s cool and different,” Share says. “The new generation is unlocking a new and different style.”

But a previous generation was also drawn to telemark, themselves taking to a freeride-ethos on an older gear paradigm, but one that was itself revolutionary. 

“Plastic boots and Cobra bindings were a pretty powerful combo,” says Dave Bouchard, who was amongst a cadre of hard skiing telemark skiers of the pre and post Y2K era who helped change the sport from what was long perceived as a mellow, overland practice to one more aggressive and brash. “Once on that gear I was feeling I could ski as well as I could on my alpine gear if not better–at least more graceful and fluid.” 

And twenty-five years ago this group took on a forward-thinking if haughty ethos–not unlike the current newschool. “This was the early 2000s. This was about the time I started to feel it was my mission to show the world that tele skiers weren’t just a bunch of leather-boot, stinky granola-eating hippies,” Bouchard remembers. 

It was in this milieu that telemark took off. Outfits like Josh Madsen’s Lipstick Films and Noah Howell’s Powderwhore Productions toured the country, driving stoke. The scene exploded with participants, leading to gear production of the likes the sport had never seen before and hasn’t seen since. And skiers like Nick Devore and Ben Dolenc–the latter of whom was sponsored by Nike–were hitting big airs, sliding rails, and leading a brash new vibe on the latest plastic boots and stouter 75mm bindings.

Perhaps illustrating the sport’s current growing pains, Matt Share and owner Dave Bombard note that many people still arrive at Bishop demo days with their old 75mm bindings, showing perhaps that while a loud and retail-minded subset pushes the new vibe, many still quietly embody the elder free-heel ethos; the push-pull of the future and the past being ever present in telemark’s evolution.

Regardless, Bishop Telemark has marketed their gear toward the newschool, aligning itself strongly with the movement–a scene anchored heavily by TELE COLO, a modern, movie-making, Instagrammable telemark outfit. No other group has so epitomized the newschool telemark movement and its style. Or been as visible. Many have thus gravitated to TELE COLO and its founder CJ Coccia, pointing to his films, tours, and social media as the zenith of the current telemark culture. 

Not unlike the earlier modern telemark movement, amongst Coccia’s chief aims is to shake telemark from the perception that it belongs to a previous generation and reframe it as progressive, fun, and stylish. In a plug for their 2023 film THIS IS TELEMARK, what marked their first full-length feature, TELE COLO brand manager Giorgia Menetre wrote in SKI that “the perception of telemark skiing remains aged–with floppy bindings, granola diets, unkept beards, and smells of patchouli. TELE COLO is here to present the ski world with the new age of telemark culture that exists beyond the stereotype.”

Coccia echoes this, describing his modern telemark edits as aiming “to give people an understanding of kind of the differences in telemark and what sort of personalities exist versus allowing people from the outside to kind of assume that it’s an older collective of people, or people that have turned into dads or moms and they want to be interested on greens while they teach their kids again, or people that are on a granola diet and listen to Grateful Dead.” 

While some jest is certainly at play in Coccia’s approach to the old guard, a kernel of truth also seems to be operative. “I say all this stuff jokingly,” Coccia says, “but also it comes from a place where I do think–weirdly enough–some people on the outside assume that telemark is a very aged thing and there’s not really a quote-unquote newschool or newer population that’s becoming interested in it.”

A tension has arisen at this interface between the old guard and the new school in telemark. And TELE COLO’s branding often plays into the schism. Though on the surface facetious and playful, their athlete bios, magazine interviews, and more seem to unavoidably mention the segment of telemark that they do not align with–a telemark cohort they point out as aged, new gear averse, and one that has occasionally been critical of the modern telemark newschool. 

In the self-referential first edition of the TELE COLO magazine, released in the fall of 2023, team athlete Greg Yearsley was asked if he had to pick a fight with telemark, what would it be over. And he redrew the line in the sand. “It always blows my mind when people get their Targas in a twist over what other people are doing,” Yearsley said, referring to the G3 Targa, a binding long used by many telemark skiers of the previous generation, and that has become a symbol of a bygone era.  

Whether as action or reaction, some figures prominent in telemark’s past have taken issue with what they feel is the newschool’s implied assertion that they are the first to tread this path, with many noting a similar newschool telemark scene first existed several decades ago. 

Josh Madsen, arguably once the leading voice in all of telemark, himself took exception to Menetre’s piece in SKI via his once weekly podcast. “What this doesn’t do is act like all of this stuff existed beforehand. Because it did,” Madsen said forcefully. “It literally sounds like something from 25 years ago where it’s like ‘we’re fighting the hippies man, screw the hippies! And all the granola eating people, and let’s make cool, rad stuff.’ I mean, that’s like my era.”

Though many found much of the episode to be self-serving and antagonistic–and Madsen never recovered from that reaction, since fading from view and closing his iconic telemark-specific ski shop–the former filmmaker and newschool skier of the previous generation has been echoed by others.

In an Instagram comment regarding an article about TELE COLO’s 2024 film tour (written by the author of this piece), Dave Bouchard–himself a member of that original newschool who organized extreme skiing and park competitions for the New England Telemark club in the 2000s–noted “these guys [TELE COLO] are doing great stuff. I don’t wanna take anything away from them, but this stuff was going on in the 2000s. New England Telemark was putting on park and pipe contests and offering $3000 prizes. I had guys like Madsen…flying into New England to compete because no one else was doing anything close for telemark skiing.”

Feeling handcuffed by the expectations that they defer to the old guard, feeling its ubiquity stifling, newschool athletes and figures have often been quick to react to these comments, most typically TELE COLO athlete Greg Yearsley. In response to Bouchard’s comment, Yearsley retorted: “can one thing be posted about [TELE COLO] without someone bringing up the 2000 tele scene? Getting real old. Do we need to have the history of telemark added to every video?” 

Coccia himself feels this clash has become pervasive in telemark. “It's a very real aspect of what's going on. You don't really have to be in tele all that long or at all to see that friction,” he says.

“Whether it's prompted by events that are happening, or tricks that are happening, or the gear that's happening, those seem to be kind of the topics of friction that tends to happen on these forums and Instagram and shit.”

Much like the wider modern world, the internet has become not only the chief conduit of the telemark subculture, but also its chosen battleground, where debates over preferred gear, technique, and even approach have framed the modern discussion on the sport.

“There are repeat offenders,” says Coccia of the often anonymous online profiles who purposefully strike a counterpoint to the telemark newschool. 

“But somehow you'll see a new person that repeats the same theme, too. So you kind of wonder; is it really just like three or four people or is it a shared ideology or kind of resistance against whatever you want to call telemark at this point in time,” he wonders. 

Though newschool figures often mirror Coccia and respond in measured tones, a darker underbelly to the dialogue has also emerged, where a collective defense of the modern newschool has at times been adversarial, even bullying, best exemplified by the Instagram account @freeheelwaifu–an anonymous, since deleted handle created to bash Madsen in the wake of his controversial podcast. 

The account’s posts–some of which used suicidal symbolism to smear Madsen–were liked by many figures central to the newschool telemark movement, further cementing the polarized internet dialogue on free-heel skiing.

Fitful or not, something has indeed changed in telemark. Amidst a gear revolution that has brought the sport into the modern fold, a contemporary interpretation of the free-heel method has emerged from a nascent newschool. But while the sport now enjoys a certain cachet amongst a younger and trendier cohort, the new school and the old guard are often strange bedfellows. While more often than not the two groups are merely stereotypes, they nonetheless represent opposing notions.  

How much that plays out in truly human interactions is an open question. While the newschool seems to feel the need to claim the ground they stand on, and some of the old guard appear bent on receiving a toll of respect for what they did first, much of it seems isolated to the wilds of the internet and the origin story and branding of the new wave; newschool skiing having always positioned itself as the antidote to a staid status quo. Between people, telemark may well be more harmonious than it appears.

But this online discourse now frames the telemark experience–and is widely consumed. And after years of rampant fears that free-heel gear would become more and more unavailable, and that telemark could indeed die, the existential tension surrounding the sport’s future has been replaced with an internal friction that may not embody the entire telemark experience, but is nonetheless ever-present.

Still, it seems telemark is having a moment. At last a younger generation–using the tools at their fingertips in social media–has not just joined the elder cadre that kept the flame alive through a fraught few decades; they have injected the sport with a fresh energy that has buoyed the scene and its commerce. And that has not gone unnoticed by the old guard.

“I’ve got nothing against the new crop of tele skiers, I love that they are keeping the turn alive,” says Dave Bouchard. “The turn and the fun of the turn is what has created a subcategory of skiing that lives on.” 

Still, even when concluding in positive terms, a certain contrast remains. “From what I’ve seen from the TELE COLO crew is they want to have fun with the turn. But there’s nothing I’ve seen on TELE COLO social media that I haven’t seen in the last 20 years prior except for maybe gear. People still are out there getting after it and sharing the love of the turn,” Bouchard says.