What I’ve Seen In Telemark (And Skiing) Over The Past 3 Seasons & What Might Be Next

In December of 2023, 99 articles ago for this series, I penned the first Tele Dribble, a column about free-heel skiing I named for a scene in the sentimental opus to seventies rock and roll, Almost Famous.

In the film, crusty rock critic Lester Bangs, played by the late and indomitable Phillip Seymour Hoffman, regales a young William Miller–the budding main character played by Patrick Fugit–with warnings of rock and roll’s imminent fall. But occasional dashes of earnestness come forth in the first meeting between the writers. “I’d stay up all night, just writing, and writing,” Bangs says. “I mean like twenty-five pages of dribble, you know about The Faces or Coltrane, you know, just to fucking write.” 

In honor of the scene, I christened a 104-page, 58,000-word MacBook-bound ramble I penned about telemark skiing “The Tele Dribble.” And when I lucked into the opportunity to write about all things telemark here at POWDER, I pressed that same name into the service of the column.

It was an opportunity I was at first shocked by. As something of the outdoor world’s also-ran, telemark has long been an afterthought to mainstream skiing. But after years of retrograde, a certain energy was rising again in free-heel skiing. A quiet gear revolution, one which brought the tech toe to telemark bindings, has matured, bringing to market innovations first sprouted from a free-heel DIY scene ever in renaissance.

But it wasn’t just telemark touring gear that was ascending. A nascent, often park-skiing newschool had also taken root, tapping into the social media machine–and the very analog craft of ski film tours–to spread the gospel not of jambands and heady turns, but of a trendy new guard ready to take the tele reins.

Telemark had undeniably left its doldrums in the past for something new, interesting, and with an unpredictable, if exciting, future at hand.

That was seen in the innovative films put out by CJ Coccia of grassroots newschool org TELE COLO, whose groundbreaking first feature-length film “THIS IS TELEMARK” was released just months before the column began. It was the first film tour the sport had seen in perhaps a decade, and it proved eminently influential. Skiers on the bleeding edge of telemark, like tele-influencer AJ Cutler, have pointed to the film as their inspiration for starting on the free-heel path. And TELE COLO’s brash vibe and deep footprint on social media has brought the telemark message–especially in its newschool form–to the masses.

But the new day for telemark has been prone to friction. In the waning months of 2023, telemark leader Josh Madsen, longtime owner of the linchpin Freeheel Life ski shop, and for decades telemark’s most prolific voice, walked away from his platform. It all came to a head after his podcast “Three Top Reasons Telemark Skiing Struggles To Grow” was met with an outpouring of disagreement, much of which played out on social media. Many in the newschool scene felt targeted by Madsen’s opinions, and online debate swirled, culminating in an anonymous hate account that posted hateful memes aimed at Madsen. The free-heel scion eventually closed his shop and receded from view. While Madsen would return for a time, resuming his podcast before pausing it again, his diminished standing in telemark remains, and has left the free-heel world without its one-time leader, a forceful source of information and direction whose hegemony some surely don’t miss, but many others certainly do, ever showing telemark’s fitful evolution.

But Telemark has moved on and into the long-pined-for modern gear paradigm that has been decades in the making. We’ve seen the new guard in bindings come to maturity with the 22 Design’ Bandit, the resort binding par excellence of the era. And Voile has come to market with their Transit TTS, the first retail-ready version of the tech-toe incorporating platform, long in the DIY shadows. And regardless of the divergent opinions many have on them, Scarpa’s release of the revamped TX Pro boot (and later TX Comp), the first meaningful upgrade to telemark footwear in fifteen years, marks a new day for free-heel skiing. Together, these products have brought telemark a full complement of modern, innovative gear, much of it proven out by a DIY scene quietly charting telemark’s next gear revolution.

Telemark’s reemergence has even permeated beyond the typical free-heel circles. ATK, the darling of the freetour movement, has plans to release a telemark binding next fall, and their reentrance into things free-heel may say louder than anything else that telemark is indeed enjoying a new day. 

Three short seasons and one hundred articles later, here we stand–in an evolving telemark subculture that has regained a small but relevant foothold in the broader ski psyche again. 

So what’s next for telemark? Does the trendy newschool iteration push telemark ever closer to the skiing mainstream, bolstering participation but perhaps ending the sport’s long subversive streak? And what gear might come next, especially if telemark rises all the more, perhaps even making itself a viable business case for bigger alpine brands? And will telemark’s long movement toward the mainstream worlds of alpine skiing and digital media be met with resistance?

As the gear becomes stouter and more performance-oriented, and with its social media arms ever pushing that narrative, telemark’s quieter, softer, and full-feeling interpretation seen in the DIY scene stands poised to make a strong counterpoint. Many have wondered if the gear and ethos of telemark is beginning to lean too heavily on stiff, rigid gear at the expense of The Turn’s sweet feel. And the DIYer’s use of neutral TTS bindings and supple footwear like Scarpa’s old F3s may show makers–including Scarpa–that a latent desire for modern but more neutral flexing options exists. 

Regardless, as a younger cohort pushes telemark further into park and big mountain, nudging the sport away from its headier roots and into a brasher form, an envelope-pushing telemarker like Will Houskamp may tear the boundary down between free-heel and fixed-heel freeride. He may even find himself in a mainline ski film. And telemark may yet be surprised by a bigger mainstream player dabbling in free-heel, especially if ATK’s foray goes well. 

But while telemark lives on, remaining a stream fed by endless rivulettes, and now has an energy it hasn’t seen in years, I hope that tenets like independence, individuality, genuineness, and even subversion remain core to the telemark experience. Those ideals–and the long sweet spot of the free-heel turn–are what have drawn so many of us into the sport for so long.

And that’s why I was compelled to write a stream of consciousness on a hopelessly long Word Doc, all about telemark skiing, in the first place. And why these first 100 columns mark just the beginning.

Here’s to many more to come.