Air Force Engineer Gary Denton Helped Win The Indy 500. Now, His DIY Bindings Might Be The Future Of Telemark.
In the summer of 2022, a user known simply as Gravity began posting videos to YouTube and the seldom visited if important free-heel forum BackcountryTalk.com of a mysterious homemade telemark binding they were developing. In true tele fashion, it was an inauspicious start. Gravity had only a few followers on their YouTube channel, and many of the user’s previous posts were simply mods to existing binding models.
But that was but the beginning of The Gravity Binding. And its creator–engineering polymath Gary Denton–had merely taken the first steps in his telemark DIY journey; one still in motion, and one that may have profound ramifications on the future of telemark equipment.
To many, perhaps most skiers–used to a plethora of boot and binding choices available at retail for nearly any use case imaginable–this story, like any in the telemark DIY canon, may seem esoteric, even superfluous. Most outdoor pursuits afford such a spectacular array of gear that the notion of tinkering–or even creating gear from scratch–rarely enters the minds of most enthusiasts.
But Gary Denton and the telemark DIY project he has christened “The Gravity Binding” is but another ripple in the homebrew free-heel pond. It’s a realm where a slew of tinkerers have quietly pushed the sport onward for decades, acting as a proving ground for innovation in a tiny subculture with few industry players and fewer still R&D dollars.
“I'm not in this to make money. I'm all set,” the amiable Denton says from his home in Salt Lake City with his everpresent smile. “It’s for fun and it's to help the industry and maybe help somebody not bust their knee like I did. If these innovations creep into the lexicon of the design of telemark bindings, that would give me a huge source of pride.”
Mrs. Gravity
Denton and his craft come with a quirky, almost whimsical energy. When emailing back and forth to schedule the interview for this piece, Denton–whom I knew then only as Gravity–noted that one afternoon I had suggested for a call wouldn’t work; he had to pick Mrs. Gravity up from the airport, after all.
“I've done various things throughout my life, little hobbies and different things, and my kids create these personas for me. So they came up with Gravity for my binding development,” Denton says with a smile. “That's all part of the schtick.”
That schtick is buttressed by Denton’s deep engineering expertise; a talent he presses into the service of creating a modern, innovative telemark binding from the ground up.
Denton earned his electrical engineering degree from the General Motors Institute (now Kettering University), beginning his career at GM designing suspension systems for Cadillacs and other GM vehicles before moving into industrial applications. He then worked for a stint at Penske Racing, developing active suspension systems for Indy cars, culminating in Al Unser Jr.’s Indy 500 win in 1994 using a vehicle that incorporated Denton’s innovations.
From there stops included the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom, where Denton designed equipment to process silicon wafers for the data storage industry. He then joined a New York-based company working on medical devices for clinical blood testing. “I don't know if you remember Theranos,” Denton says of the infamous start-up created by Elizabeth Holmes that ended in criminal fraud charges and a prison sentence for the founder. “So at the time she was developing her assays and instruments, I was doing something incredibly similar for the diagnostic company. My product actually got 510(k) clearance and made it to market and she found out that orange is the new black,” Denton says cheekily of the now-imprisoned entrepreneur.
Now an avionics engineer for the U.S. Air Force, Denton has long been a hobbyist, using his free time to tinker. “All the time I've done kind of little side projects on my own,” Denton says. But the Gravity Binding has represented new territory for him. “This has kind of taken on a life of its own, kind of as deep as I've ever gone into designing something for myself that could possibly be a marketable product or the technology could be licensed or used by another company,” he says.
Owing to a fall that injured his knee years ago, and not unlike other prominent telemark DIYers like Jason Quintana, Denton is also driven to design bindings that are releasable. “I had a cross-country skiing accident in the backcountry where I tore every ligament in my knee, had to be extricated on a stretcher and it was really bad,” Denton remembers. “And ever since then I've had PTSD over a twisting fall.”
As with many telemark skiers concerned with releasability, Denton gravitated toward InWild’s Meidjo binding; a tech-toe incorporating NTN model with adjustable release characteristics. But while Denton enjoyed skiing the binding, he also found it cumbersome, including how the system incorporated brakes and some of its aftermarket feature sets. Denton was thus inspired to tinker with the Meidjo, reversing the torsion springs on the binding’s claw (the portion of the binding that attaches to the sole of the boot in a new telemark norm binding). The simple mod created a platform that seemed more intuitive for switching between uphill and downhill modes.
From there Denton created his own DIY telemark binding that had the characteristics he felt were missing in other retail-available options. “I wanted more performance and some different features than was currently available in a releasable binding,” Denton says. “I then got the goal; I want brakes; I want it to release; I want it to tour easily with two pins. I want it to be modular. And so that kind of created these levels of requirements, and I went to work fully designing the entire binding to meet all of them.”
The Gravity Binding incorporates an interchangeable NTN system where either a toe cage or a two pin tech toe can be used via threaded inserts. The cage version also allows for what Denton refers to as an easy step-in ski brake. Moreover, the binding is designed to ski with immediate tension as the system engages in a telemark turn.
“It's very smooth and progressive. I've got all the pivots on bearings. I've got the spring box on bearings. So, there's no–we call it hysteresis–in the design. There's no dead spots. You just get that pure, smooth telemark force,” Denton says.
Denton’s earlier iterations of The Gravity Binding–based on the Meidjo’s flex plate–have been updated to what he calls the “Gravity Quantum Leap.” This incorporates a removable spring box allowing for lighter, more efficient touring and an adjustable pivot point where the spring box attaches via a yolk pin.
The Gravity Binding’s iterative progression has been steered largely by Denton’s engineering ethos. “Modular open systems is kind of the new buzzword in defense equipment, where you can unplug one card and plug in another card and create a different personality,” Denton says. “So I was kind of thinking along those lines.”
With releasability front of mind, Denton has further pushed the envelope in telemark DIY using novel approaches, even experimenting with alpine toes in his bindings, including the Salomon Shift hybrid model, which he has found to telemark well in its downhill mode while offering an efficient two-pin touring capability. “The compliance in the toe allows it to telemark like a dream. It damps out a lot of vibration and still provides solid feedback,” Denton notes over email. While the Shift toe seems to have promise in a DIY telemark binding, it remains a work in progress. “I was really loving the feel of it. Until the toe popped out on one side on an icy steep section when I was edging hard with my back foot,” Denton says.
Denton’s experiments continue on, and have cemented his feeling that telemark’s manufacturers have perhaps neglected the full scope of releasability. “I think they need to start thinking about releasability,” Denton says, referencing how even models designed for safety release often have a DIN-equivelence that is likely unreleasable. And Denton feels that a traditionalist approach has possibly led to a narrow-mindedness in development. “Probably the reason they haven't developed release further is just that traditional telemark bindings didn't have it. We're still looking at metal toe cages and that's what we've inherited and what's come up through the development. Like the alpine releasable toe, like the Salomon Shift that I've been playing around with, they just haven't thought about it. Maybe they don't think it's possible. Maybe it's not in their thinking, but it's definitely possible, as I'm starting to demonstrate with the Shift, and it works for telemark and the releaseability is on par with alpine, at least in certain circumstances.”
Asked if he plans to present his ideas to manufacturers, Denton demurs. “I don't feel like I'm ready yet to do that. I mean, Volle is six miles from my house. 22 Designs is four hours. Bishop is in Colorado, not too far away. I think once I get to the point where I feel like it's bulletproof and it's super durable and it's just something that they can't ignore, then I think I'll start reaching out,” Denton says. “But I hope through interactions like this…that they'll read it and they'll go, ‘Oh man, this is out there.’ And maybe they'll reach out to me. But yeah, that's on the to-do list.”
For now, Denton continues deeper into the telemark DIY realm. He is part of a group of tinkerers who have undeniably moved telemark and its equipment into the modern fold; a loose assemblage who have picked up a mantle long present in free-heel skiing. And the modern slew of homemade telemark gear has proven broadly influential for the sport. From the cutting-edge touring bindings now available to the sport’s modern boots, telemark gear is imprinted with the DNA of telemark’s DIY scene. And this group’s work continues.
Denton sees telemark’s next challenge as bringing to market relatable, user-friendly gear that is approachable from a technical standpoint, kid-friendly, and more affordable. “I think if someone were to come up with an alpine releasable step-in binding with a brake, low-cost binding for kids…that might usher in more children taking up the sport and then that would create a market and then also grow it.”
Denton further hopes for a telemark future that mirrors his latest experiments, focusing more on releasability and a certain assimilation with alpine models. “I think what I'd like to see for the next generation would be something simple, for the masses, that's releasable. And looks and feels more like an alpine binding. So people would be more likely to adopt it.”