Josh Madsen Has No Comment
When I noted in June of 2024 that someone was missing from the telemark subculture, the vacuum that person had left remained inescapable. Josh Madsen’s fitful departure from all things free-heel some six months earlier was then unavoidably awkward and touchy–like a permanent row between friends in a tight-knit group.
Following his ‘Three Top Reasons Telemark Struggles to Grow’ podcast–a divisive and raw criticism of much of the modern telemark landscape–people had taken sides as debate raged in typically quiet corners of the internet. Many stood behind him, while others loudly proclaimed his takes were off-base. An anonymous Instagram account hurling hateful memes at Madsen was then still active. And, as the fallout mounted, the former leading podcaster, retailer, and central figure of the sport had completely and dramatically receded from the public eye, most notably closing his eminent telemark-specific ski shop Freeheel Life with little explanation (save for a threadbare consultation service), leaving a yawning chasm in the sport’s retail landscape just as it seemed to be rising again.
Madsen eventually returned, this time to a revamped YouTube channel, and without his shop or a broad-reaching podcast like he had before. But in his absence, the sport–bigger than any person or retailer, no matter how ever-present–had more or less moved on. A new podcast had emerged, somewhat covering the void his program had long filled, while other retailers had jumped in where Freeheel Life had left off. Telemark had found a new equilibrium, including one with Josh Madsen: former sponsored telemark athlete; previous owner of Telemark Skier Magazine; leading podcaster, thinker, and hypeman for the sport. He seemed to find purchase in his new haunts–a subscriber-only podcast that both continued his long run as free-heel content creator and protected him from critical listeners behind the ballast of a paywall.
Madsen’s initial exit from the limelight and subsequent return indeed seemed marked by a self-protecting nature. As he retreated to the controlled confines of a member’s-only influencer platform, Madsen’s reemergence may have had fewer followers, but it gave him ultimate command over his domain. Even with the diminished relevance that came with that, Madsen seemed more than happy to do things his way, and, without a retail space and the requisite need for broader appeal, was seemingly more emboldened to air his opinions, regardless of the smaller wake he now made.
For years Madsen had been ubiquitous in telemark, his influence touching nearly every facet of the free-heel scene. And his confident, booming viewpoint was far and away the leading source of opinion in the sport, buttressed by his Freeheel Life store; the chief retailer the scene over. Few others had ascended to such heights in their skiing as Madsen, and no other retailer had been so broadly influential to the sport’s commerce and culture in North America. That one-two punch of longtime telemark figure coupled with leading businessman gave Madsen’s takes a legitimacy almost no one else could match. And the shop’s associated podcast–a deep take on the sport hosted weekly by Madsen and running mostly uninterrupted for nearly two-hundred episodes–marked not just a lynchpin of telemark’s discourse, but also the ultimate pulpit for his authoritative viewpoint. There Madsen promulgated his views on the need for a telemark specific industry; there he defiantly responded to takes he disagreed with. He seemed to bask in the spotlight–alone–as the telemark figure.
But in almost out of character fashion, Madsen has to this point forgone the opportunity to tell his story on why he retreated, either on his own platform, or another.
Madsen respectfully declined my overtures via email offering him the chance to be profiled, for his motives to be revealed. Instead, he has crafted an abridged narrative of his departure and revival, itself diminishing the magnitude of this shift–and the reasons for it.
Months after his podcast had gone quiet, and his ski shop had mysteriously closed, Madsen returned to the fold, this time on Instagram, proclaiming–without referencing the vitriolic and fitful discourse that had occurred– that he had reemerged from a supposedly self-imposed isolation.
“I know a lot of you were wondering where I disappeared to—I went silent for a while. I was off-grid, unplugged, and fully immersed in the wild,” Madsen claimed.
“Eventually, I stumbled upon a yurt, perched high up in the mountains. That’s where I’ve been these past months, diving into every book on Telemark skiing, exploring the art of the perfect powder turn, and finding my rhythm in the purity of the mountain’s silence.
But now I’m back.
So let’s fucking go.”
Madsen subsequently noted on his subscriber-only podcast that he may one day reveal more details as to why he chose the path he has. But in the absence of that revelation he has instead diminished or even ignored the events and actions that led him to where he is now.
Moreover, Madsen has also turned away from the broad relationship he once enjoyed with the telemark world, and, after his prolonged hiatus catalyzed by a divisive fall from grace, chose to again post and podcast, but solely on his terms, often eschewing any interaction with the telemark world outside of his soapbox.
On his February 4th 2025 “Black-Level Livestream #8 | My Predictions & Opinions on Telemark Bindings 2025” Madsen doubled-down on his proud seclusion. “I live in a hole, so I’m not watching other videos, whatever,” he said laughing.
Tellingly, Madsen continued with both an admission of his purposeful ignorance of the goings-on in telemark, and an appeal to his disciples.
“I live in a bubble, too, you guys. I’m not watching–I literally don’t know what’s going on. Which is great, and beautiful,” Madsen said on the podcast. “Full disclosure, I’m not like a news source anymore. Because I really don’t follow this stuff. There could be some announcement out there, and you guys are like ‘what are you talking about? What about this binding?’ Maybe I need to put it out there–you be my source of news and you tell me what I should be paying attention to.”
It’s a dissonant capitulation that not only seems proud of being out of the loop, but marks a complete transformation from industry stalwart–something the sport long benefited from and still pines for–to the narrower purview of free-heel opinion pundit.
While on the surface this may seem inconsequential, Madsen’s transformation has impacted the telemark discourse he did so much to build up, and long anchored. And he has replaced his eminently important content–be it the previous iteration of the podcast, Telemark Skier Magazine (which he also shuttered) and more–with something more self-aggrandizing and opinionated.
The telemark sphere now only gets Josh Madsen’s take in the distilled, one-way version he broadcasts from the safety of a secluded perch. And while his connections and eminence seem to be at least somewhat intact, owing to the fact he still retains over 15,000 Instagram followers and nearly 10,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel–staggering numbers for a telemark figure–he has nonetheless retreated to a platform that he can meticulously control while avoiding outside influence in any form–something he couldn’t quite contain when his podcast was free, when his ski shop strove to grow its business.
Perhaps Madsen’s new approach speaks to a factionalism endemic in telemark–itself already isolated from the wider ski world. But it may also illustrate how that reality easily becomes magnified through the lens of social media and the distance it puts between people, especially as rivalries and competitiveness grow as the sport evolves, ever fitfully.
In my lengthy profile on Madsen that ran on my Telemark Voices blog in November of last year, I concluded that telemark undoubtedly moves forward, but is now more polarized. Then, the nature of Madsen’s return seemed crystalized–continuing on, but with much less regard for other perspectives put forth in the telemark canon–contributing to a diminished role, and into an ever factional discourse.
But things changed again in March of last year. Reaching out to Madsen regarding his YouTube channel, I received not a personal reply but this boilerplate response:
Hey, thanks so much for reaching out about your YouTube membership—I truly appreciate your support.
I’ve made the decision to discontinue the premium subscription on my channel. The simple reason is that my other business is now demanding more of my time. Rather than compromise the quality of the scheduled Telemark content by trying to squeeze it in, I’ve decided not to take on more than I can manage. I’m no longer in a position to deliver the level of content your hard-earned money and support deserve, so I’m returning to my original channel format with less frequent uploads.
I can’t thank you enough for the support you’ve given me over the past few years with the premium option. It helped me create some of my favorite Telemark content to date and pushed me to explore new ideas.
Wishing you an amazing spring and summer—and remember, #SpreadTelemark Always.
— Josh Madsen
Save for a few posts, the Freeheel Life Instagram account remained silent from early April through mid-November, when it came back to life, operated more as a personal platform, while Madsen’s YouTube channel–what was his evolved pulpit–has seen a few reposts of older content. As quickly and forcefully as he attempted to reenter the conversation, Madsen now inhabits a sort of netherregion of relevance.
Madsen’s course seems to show the fraught path of the telemark-focused creator–that whether a manufacturer, retailer, or reporter, the genuflecting turn offers perhaps as many roadblocks to success as it engenders passionate responses from its practitioners.
But it also reflects the current zeitgeist of the wider human culture, and how that continues to rear its head, even in telemark skiing. Social media has come to dominate our lives, granting a conduit for information never before seen. But it has driven most into digital corners. And this has affected a form of skiing that once prided itself in being weird, countercultural, heady, and soulful. Perhaps those core tenets of telemark are now at risk as our own little subculture, long detached from the mainstream, barrels toward the abyss of algorithms and punditry.
Much to his critique–or perhaps credit–Josh Madsen, for now, seems to worry mostly about other things.
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