Is Telemark Skiing Dying? Veteran Skiers Share Their Honest Take

They say a lot of things about time. Time loves a hero; tragedy plus time makes comedy. But no matter the trope, one thing remains true: time waits for no one. And with creaking knees and the ever present allure of fixed-heel skiing–less demanding but nonetheless exciting and perhaps higher performance–it seems the march of the clock presents unique challenges for the telemark skier ever trying to stick it out. And with so many former free-heelers out there, it’s easy to wonder if skiing longevity and telemark–at least for many–is a fraught pair.

“I've seen many move on from telemark, mostly due to injuries or physical maladies that make it painful or impossible,” notes Craig Dostie, who founded the venerable Couloir magazine in 1988 and is now the resident elder statesman and evangelist of the modern telemark movement. 

Meghan Kelly, the legendary and still ripping telemark skier who appeared in myriad films and big mountain free-heel competitors in the 2010s agrees. “Only about 10 percent of my friends who used to telemark still do!” she says. “They've switched to alpine/AT for a number of reasons.” 

Beyond injury, Kelly notes that she’s seen many abandon The Turn in favor of alpine touring’s better uphill efficiency, especially when the tele skier in question begins having bigger aspirations in the backcountry that require more effort, thus making a descent in the telemark style a liability for fatigued legs. Kelly also points to alpine equipment’s better releasability, and the simple fact that many free-heelers eventually prioritize being able to keep up with their alpining friends as important considerations for the fixed-heel convert. 

But telemark hasn’t just been prone to the defection of just a few; the lunging turn long ago counted many more amongst its ranks. Dostie further waxes on the many reasons so many who took up the turn during its rise decades ago did so only to eventually move on from telemark: “They love fresh turns, but they hate the weight. So they flipped to alpine touring. But the older ones gave it up due to age-related atrophy. A few gave it up 'cuz they never really figured it out; never really experienced the sweeping tele sensation.”

That sweeping sensation was but one of myriad reasons many picked up telemark during the sport’s rise. And in and around those Y2K years, just before the AT gear revolution, telemark was seen as the technique and equipment for skiing beyond the boundaries of resorts. The telemarking ranks thus swelled as more looked to the backcountry and its rising cachet. 

In that technologically less ascendent time, telemark was also perhaps not seen as the performance sacrifice it seems now. “I think all forms of skiing powder/off-piste were more difficult in the 90s just due to equipment. I think telemarking was just a bit harder than something that was already hard,” Kelly notes. “In the 00s, lightweight AT equipment hadn't really hit the scene at least in the US and tele bindings were still the lightest and so if you wanted one set up for both resort and BC skiing, you just telemarked.”

Dostie notes that before telemark’s rise–instigated largely by Scarpa’s release of the first all-plastic telemark boot with the Terminator in 1992–a building mystique around all things telemark in the 1980s had primed the sport for growth, which would feed the notion in the 1990s and early 2000s that telemark was the equipment of choice for the backcountry skier.

“There was a fairly concerted effort promoting telemark that began with people like Steve Barnett, Rick Borkovec, Tom Carter and Allan Bard, Paul Parker and the publisher of POWDER,” Dostie says of the cadre of legendary chroniclers who instigated telemark’s reemergence on leathers and three-pin bindings in 1970s North America and continued evangelizing as the decades wore on. That “gave it an underground appeal that exploded when Scarpa developed the first plastic telemark boot.”

In the days after telemark’s plastic boot revolution and before the widespread adoption of light-weight alpine touring equipment–free-heel had its moment. “The general media consensus was an emphasis on telemark as THE tool of choice for backcountry skiing,” Dostie says. “At the time it was the lightest, most efficient gear available, although, ironically, that ceased as soon as plastic telemark boots arrived. However, the perception of it being the tool of choice remained.”

Droves of hardcore skiers–and those who yearned to be perceived as hardcore skiers–took to telemark in the 1990s, buoying the scene and demand for its equipment, positioning the telemark skier as perhaps the core snowrider of the day. But that moment wouldn’t last, and as technological improvements came to the fore for AT gear–and as telemark gear seemed to rest on its laurels–the multitudes of mostly half-in telemark skiers left.

“When skis became fatter and AT boots and bindings became lighter, people started leaving,” says Meghan Kelly. “So many legends telemarked back in that time and probably would still rip today.” 

Indeed it wasn’t just lay telemark skiers who jumped into the building AT craze; some of the strongest free-heelers of the generation would start skiing in the fixed-heel manner. “Kasha Rigby was one of those people who switched to be more efficient traveling in the world's biggest mountains,” Kelly notes of perhaps the most celebrated telemark skier of the 90s. The late Rigby legendarily took third place in the 1993 US Extremes on telemark gear, and she would go on to make free-heel descents of eight-thousand meter peaks in the Himalaya, and beyond. Other telemark luminaries, like AJ Cargill, would similarly pick up the alpine method. “AJ Cargill was the first woman to telemark ski the Grand Teton and now exclusively alpine skis.” Kelly says of the Jackson Hole legend who took second overall in the 1997 Alaska Extreme Skiing World Championships and took the overall International Free Skiers Association’s title that same year on alpine gear, before telemarking the Grand in 2004.

The broader tides in skiing eventually relegated telemark to also-ran status. Once viewed as the choice for true skiers, the free-heel method eventually succumbed to the reality that fixed-heel skiing–especially on modern, lightweight equipment–was the most efficient way to tackle the backcountry. En masse, people left The Turn behind.

But challenges to sticking with telemark also rear their head on the individual level. “As a busy mom and professional it is hard to get as many ski days as I used to, so honestly if I'm skiing at a resort, I can ski like 20k vertical until my form starts breaking down due to fatigue,” Kelly says. “This can be advantageous or not when you have limited time. On one hand you get a good workout in less time, on the other hand, let's say you only get a few days to ski a full day a month or you're going on a ski trip–it can be a disadvantage as you're not using your precious time the best.”

Still, while most have left telemark in the past–and with its physicality and the ever-alluring alpine method complicating the path forward for the many who still do–many have stood by the turn, perhaps out of being headstrong, but maybe more so because of a deep devotion to a harder approach.

“AJ Cargill once told me I must be really stubborn for not switching yet and in a way, that's true,” Kelly says. “I feel like I just can't give up yet because I have yet to master it and I know there are people out there who are better than I am, so I know I can keep getting better.”

Dostie, approaching his eighth decade on this planet, himself offers an appeal to the harder things and their greater payoff–perhaps something that has detracted many–as telemark’s strongest intrigue. “Why have I stuck with telemark? Because of the sensation of the turn, in spite of it being less efficient, heavier, and more difficult,” he notes. “To experience that requires proficiency in the skill necessary, so it is not something that you can just buy your way into; it must be sought and developed to experience the rewards it offers.”

On this most odd of winter seasons, warm as a nice spring with little snow to boot, I’ve looked in the mirror myself and wondered what sticking it out with telemark looks like. As the clock approaches forty, with two kids in tow, a day job, and an obsessive side hustle (what you’re reading now) my free time–especially for downhill skiing–has been sacrificed writ large. My ski seasons have atrophied from days in the hundreds to the twenties; my similarly out-of-shape quads have screamed the few days I’ve managed to ride lifts this year.

And I did the unthinkable last spring, and bought an AT setup. Since then I’ve been warned by more than one stranger that even the most dogged telemark skier’s time with heels free is borrowed when the first fixed heel rig finds a spot in the garage. 

But perhaps notions of a mutually exclusive choice between disciplines is incomplete.

Kelly sees a future not so much defined by dogmatic adherence solely to tele, nor a nose-up alpine-or-bust approach, but something perhaps more balanced, with progression in mind, where some of those who left telemark may return to the free-heel fold. “I think others might come back soon just to keep things fresh–I bet alpine skiing had that same allure–the hook of incrementally getting better but, as Buddhists know, maybe the middle way is better,” the thoughtful free-heel crusher waxes. “We are all skiers and some of us switch our bindings from time to time.”

Perhaps then it isn’t just that telemark always has an end date, but that our relationship with it can change over time as we evolve.

Still, with how many ex-free-heelers there are out there, and how taxing the devotion to the genuflecting turn can be both in body and soul, for some of us, there may indeed be an expiration date to our telemark lives.

And not only is that perhaps not permanent, if it is, it’s okay.

As the late Edward Abbey wrote long ago, the path–even of the dogmatic–may be best endeavored avoiding extremes.

“Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am–a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic,” Abbey wrote. “Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.”