Telemark Ski - anyone know about it

[PAabe]

So I have ordered the tele setup from Fey brothers - Crispi XP 3 buckle 75mm boots and 170 length rossignol smash 7 skis 92 width, apparently they don't make them much narrower than that anymore, they said they should be ok for hardpack. I did end up going for new, it seemed to be not that much more cost than used. I await their arrival with great interest.

Another dumb question for y'all, but I was wondering after watching the skinny cambered cross country skis and leather boots in the video above - my cross country skis are somewhat substantial (I don't often get the chance to ski in tracks so no sense having real skinny track skis), waxless rossignol bc 65 positrack with the NNN-BC binding, metal edge and a bit of sidecut, the boots seem to have a clip for a runaway strap, can one tele turn on those? I was going down a fairly large hill on them the other day and dropped my knee and was able to coax out a couple (very wide-radius) turns, although, I am not sure if it was actually a real tele turn. Would it be an absolute smooth-brained idea to take those for a spin on the bunny hill off a lift sometime? I would not be so worried getting down the hill as getting yelled at by ski patrol for being a dumbass (which I am but still)

 

[Shredmonkey254]

So I have ordered the tele setup from Fey brothers - Crispi XP 3 buckle 75mm boots and 170 length rossignol smash 7 skis 92 width, apparently they don't make them much narrower than that anymore, they said they should be ok for hardpack. I did end up going for new, it seemed to be not that much more cost than used. I await their arrival with great interest.

Another dumb question for y'all, but I was wondering after watching the skinny cambered cross country skis and leather boots in the video above - my cross country skis are somewhat substantial (I don't often get the chance to ski in tracks so no sense having real skinny track skis), waxless rossignol bc 65 positrack with the NNN-BC binding, metal edge and a bit of sidecut, the boots seem to have a clip for a runaway strap, can one tele turn on those? I was going down a fairly large hill on them the other day and dropped my knee and was able to coax out a couple (very wide-radius) turns, although, I am not sure if it was actually a real tele turn. Would it be an absolute smooth-brained idea to take those for a spin on the bunny hill off a lift sometime? I would not be so worried getting down the hill as getting yelled at by ski patrol for being a dumbass (which I am but still)

So... back in the mid 80's to the early 90's, I was big into the tele thing. Traveled the New England Tele race circuit for a few of those years, hit Dickie Hall's Telefest at Mad River. Loved it all until tearing my ACL at Alta while on Alpine skis. Complications - 3 surgery's later - the next year I was back out on the Alpine boards and slowly worked my way back to being able to tele respectably down Outer Limits, which was my post surgery goal. But my knee always bothered me, so I tried snowboarding. I have not gone back to skiing since 1994, so just the opposite of what you are doing! Anyway, back in those days, I would take my super skinny edgeless track skis with scales underfoot and low cut boots and ski from my house to the top of my local night skiing ski area. I would tele down and the lifty's would let me back on the chair with no ticket as they didn't believe it could be skied on those. Would do a couple laps then head back home. So the long answer is yes, go right out there and use them! Once you master the tele turn, you will not find it impossible to do! Good luck to you, I look forward to hearing how you like it and have been secretly enjoying this thread.

 

[flakeydog]

Another dumb question for y'all, but I was wondering after watching the skinny cambered cross country skis and leather boots in the video above - my cross country skis are somewhat substantial (I don't often get the chance to ski in tracks so no sense having real skinny track skis), waxless rossignol bc 65 positrack with the NNN-BC binding, metal edge and a bit of sidecut, the boots seem to have a clip for a runaway strap, can one tele turn on those? I was going down a fairly large hill on them the other day and dropped my knee and was able to coax out a couple (very wide-radius) turns, although, I am not sure if it was actually a real tele turn. Would it be an absolute smooth-brained idea to take those for a spin on the bunny hill off a lift sometime? I would not be so worried getting down the hill as getting yelled at by ski patrol for being a dumbass (which I am but still)

The first tele setup I ever tried c. mid-late eighties was just some leather boots about hiking boot height and a pair of 210cm double-camber backcountry skits with a metal edge. It is tough fighting the double-camber to really get an arc out of the ski. I eventually got a set of single camber (but still pretty narrow) tele skis in a 205 and that made a difference. Next came a pair of higher and firmer leather boots, better still. For me the real revolutionary development was a cable on the binding. This really drives the front of the ski into the snow as the heel comes up and forces the ski to arc. It also keeps the ski flopping back at you on every tiny bump in the trail. It also makes tele bump skiing possible, and very fun. Then throw in plastic boots and some legit alpine-style skis and you can carve away.

I still have the old backcountry stuff because there are a lot of places to go where you don't want to deal with skins and all of that. You just want to ski, up, down, across, etc without any transition.

 

[PAabe]

I will have to give the nnn-bc skis a go off the lift sometime then, but not until I can do a legit turn on the legit tele skis!

 

[flakeydog]

I don’t know if the NNN BC’s will do the trick. The pivot point is way up there, at or in front of the toe. 75mm bindings bring it back closer to the natural bend in your foot. You can try it but you lose a lot of control when the ball of your foot loses contact with the ski. It may work but be prepared to flail around a bit.

 

[PAabe]

The YouTube algorithm, it is frightening sometimes...

Improving your telemark turn on cross country skis​

Improving your parallel turns on cross country skis​

(I did not search for these videos...)

 

[PAabe]

Thank you all again for the advice! I went to Shawnee last night to try out the tele setup for the first time. The tele turns were getting much better than last time, not sure if that is due to the equipment, better fitting boots, the Telemark Tips, or just getting more practice. Probably some combination of that. My legs are still burning lol.

I got the boots heat fitted at my ski shop and they are now by far the most comfortable ski boots I have ever worn, even more so than my cross country boots. They seemed to start flexing pretty good at the bellows after a few runs, and the bindings/boot seems to have much more snap/spring/power than the rentals I tried. One thing regarding the bindings, 22 designs vice, they have only 3 pin settings instead of 5. I do not know how much touring I will be doing on these in the future, but I hope the loosest setting is loose enough to hack around on them a bit with wax/skins. I have yet to move the pin out of the default #2 position. I dugout the old short kid's poles to use as recommended by Allan & Mike, never expected to use those again.

I also thoroughly enjoyed reading Allan and Mike's Really Cool Backcountry Ski Book, it has lots of good ideas for winter camping that I had not thought about before.