Mount Crested Butte – Dylan Crossman had everything to lose.
He was virtually assured of first place, his fifth consecutive win at the 11th annual U.S. Extreme Freeskiing Telemark Championships. For his final run of four on Crested Butte’s steep and poorly blanketed Headwall, the best competitive telemark skier on snow simply had to remain on his feet. It was certainly a tall order, considering the death-cookie pocked condition of the Headwall, but judges already had awarded the 26-year-old from Vermont the highest scores of the contest on his first three descents of the firm and thin face. It was his win to lose.
“I wanted to keep stepping it up,” said Crossman, who has won every contest he has entered in the nation’s premier telemark competition. “We need people to see that things are possible. Telemarking never stops being challenging. It’s relentless that way.”
Crossman – without a second’s hesitation on his final run – leapt into the boniest line and made two scary drops before uncorking an almost-always- inadvisable 360 into the Volkswagen- sized bumps that had destroyed many of his competitors. He stomped the landing and ripped deep tele turns down the face to the roaring approval of the mostly knee-dipping, baffle- booted crowd below.
On a day in which half of the final 10 men endured ugly, at-the-mercy-of- the-mountain falls on their final runs, Crossman confirmed his status as the Michael Jordan of telemark skiing by earning the highest score in the comp on his every run and his fifth title at the extremes.
Five in a row at Crested Butte. All three tele comps in recent years at Alpine Meadows. Since his days growing up chasing his dad and two brothers down the meanest bumps in the East at Vermont’s Mad River Glen, Crossman has elevated his sport of big-mountain telemarking to its loftiest realms.
But Crossman is an anomaly in telemarking, a sort of Chosen One. The vast majority of competitive big-mountain telemarkers would not rank well in extreme alpine skiing contests, where a hand touching the snow typically dashes hopes of a top-10 finish. In Saturday’s finals at Crested Butte, more than half of the top men’s competitors delivered rag-doll tumbles, head-first-on-their-back slides through the rock bands and barely-in-control blasts through the bumps for their final run. Granted, it was the nation’s top telemark contest and it was the best time to crank the dial to 11, despite the flattest of light and nothing but icy rocks and bumps. Utah skier JT Robinson’s final-run front flip – thrown after an ugly wreck that pretty much trashed his three-run score – was evidence enough of the telemark passion. Then Crossman threw a way-sketchy 360 when it was not crucial and Crested Butte’s eternally vibrant telemark vibe peaked.
As if to make up for its inherent wobbliness, the telemark clan bonds like no other in skiing. Think those ‘boarder dudes are the tightest? Think again. Telemarkers are the ski world’s most glowing Tinkerbells, a family-owned fairy duster, a soulful distributor of the finest vibes on snow. Never was that more evident than Sunday at Crested Butte, when 186 telemarkers donned the most outrageous costumes and raced up and down their beloved mountain’s burliest slush in the freakiest freak show on snow, the 33rd annual Al Johnson race.
At its essence, telemark skiing is about making skiing harder. It appeals to those types who gladly choose the most difficult way to descend a snowy hill.
“It’s skiing, but telemarking is a totally different technique. It’s just harder. A lot harder,” said Francesca Pavillard-Cain, who, at 14, won last year’s junior division in the alpine skiing version of the extremes at Crested Butte and took first among junior women at this month’s U.S. Telemark Nationals in Steamboat Springs.
“Part of that being unstable thing makes it fun for me,” said Jake Sakson, a 17-year-old phenom floppy skier from Carbondale’s Colorado Rocky Mountain School. “But I think if telemark is going to get bigger, something will have to change to make it different than alpine instead of just harder.”
Sakson’s strong, smooth and solid style dominated the junior men’s contest and earned him enough points to take third (and $650 instead of $250 if he were skiing in the men’s comp). Sakson, an expert unicycle rider able to pogo over stairs and big drops with rabbit-like agility, is obviously a big fan of extra-hard endeavors. He recently decided to bang gates and found the podium in all but one event in this month’s U.S. Telemark Nationals at Steamboat Springs. He won the Freeheel Throwdown at Copper Mountain this year. To make his sport “different … instead of just harder” Sakson is incorporating telemark landings into his performances in terrain parks. He’s working to drop his knee everywhere, all the time.
And that knee-dipping message, revived from Norwegian antiquity some 30-plus years ago by, not-surprisingly, a Crested Butte local, remains a movement.
“We only have half a binding holding us down, you know,” Crossman said. “It takes a lot more focus. And the culture behind telemarking really is inspiring.”
Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
RESULTS
U.S. Extreme Freeskiing Telemark Championships
At Crested Butte
Adult women
1. Martha Burley, Fernie, British Columbia
2. Sarah Light, Whitefish, Mont.
3. Kate Cardamone, Aspen
Junior women
1. Mailly Mackensie, Crested Butte
2. Francesca Pavillard-Cain, Steamboat Springs
3. Molly Etters, Vail
Adult men
1. Dylan Crossman, Randolph, Vt.
2. Colin MacMillan, Crested Butte
3. Mark Welgos, Durango
Junior men
1. Jake Sakson, Carbondale
2. Rob Wear, Edwards
3. Jack Burger, Evergreen
Masters men
1. Launce Gouw, Salt Lake City
2. Ranson Leeds, Littleton
3. Richard Pratt, Denver
