Sometimes we all need a reason to get up in the morning.
Other times, incentive literally showers us from the heavens.
Such has been the case this most recent solstice season, when snow-worshipping pagans like myself find cause for celebration in every flake falling from the sky. Even as the holiday hangover hits its apex, the reasons to rise and shine continue to pile up to form a clean, white canvas inscribed solely with inspiration on the mountains outside my window.
Motivation can come in countless shapes, like the snowflakes themselves, each with its own contours. Whether it’s outside encouragement, a mental muse or corporal stimulation cerebrally stored and ready to extend its reach to your feet when the moment demands, inspiration always exists, despite occasionally lying dormant as a noble fir in the depths of winter. Once awoken, naturally, its results are equally varied.
And so it was this Christmas past, when I awoke not only to a fresh blanket of snow but to a presumably true tale in this very newspaper from a fellow named Donald Mace Williams, who spent a full 55 years between his first and second telemark ski turns. Accidentally encountering the serpentine sensation he previously only had imagined through photographic evidence as a 16-year-old in 1945, Williams was unable to replicate the feat until some seven years ago, at age 71, leaning on the sturdy tools of the modern telemark era.
Not that there are any genuine shortcuts to mastering the subtle nuances of sliding down a slippery, snow-covered slope without the benefit of alpine bindings, no matter what your age. But when it comes to keeping your feet in this original form of free- heeled skiing, the telemark turn has an unparalleled ability to get under your skin.
I won’t bore you by recapping the history of Norseman Sondre Norheim’s innovation of the technique way back in the 1860s beyond recognition in its day that the linear incision resultant of the knee-dropping method he fostered was preferred by the era’s as-yet unrecognized powderhounds. Since there was no such thing as alpine — or “fixed-heel” — skiing back then, Norheim outskied his contemporaries by slipping the tip of his uphill ski back toward the binding of the other, effectively creating one long, arcing edge that sliced through the snow with every subsequent signature drop of the knee.
Despite the inevitable evolution of lift-served alpine skiing, disciples remained, admiring the perceived grace of a telemark turn well accomplished and understanding that the route to such accomplishments is anything but elegant. With waxed sticks attached only at your toes, the endless opportunities for inventive tumbles easily outnumber turning options.
Given my initial battle for mastery, I still tend to think of each linked recovery as a sequential derivative of yoga’s “warrior pose.” But we all choose our fights.
Like Williams (and presumably Norheim), my own leather-booted beginnings in the discipline were less than attractive. I became a twice-a- year telemark skier upon moving to ski country in the early 1990s, and although the tele tribe was about as lean as a vegan in a sweat lodge at the time, the best skiers I knew on the core slopes of places like Crested Butte and Telluride managed to make the skinny sticks that dangled from their toes dance down the mountain in ways most of us fixed-heeled oafs could only imagine.
That was around the same time the rear-entry alpine ski boot was in vogue — rigid plastic vices on my tender, high-arched tootsies — and although I found no shortage of inspiration in the free-heeled skiing form, it was the comfortable shoes that ultimately attracted me. And it was those infuriatingly straight, skinny skis that soon sent me to snowboarding. There I discovered the joy of sidecut, the sensation of flotation and the cozy fit of leather boots.
As most of the mainstream skiing community now recognizes, snowboards ultimately inspired the reinvention of the ski, adding shape and size to the traditional design and increasing the fun accordingly. It wouldn’t be long before the tele tribe followed suit.
At this point in skiing history, I’ve been around the mountain a few times over. I appreciate the precision and speed the alpine boot and binding provide, and the pure pleasure of powder turns on a snowboarding setup — both of which I’ll strap to my feet as conditions merit.
But after mastering the telemark turn to the point of relative comfort on some of the planet’s most pucker-inducing terrain, I determined some time ago that nothing motivates me to get up and savor the snow more than freeing my feet — and my skis — to move as they were designed to. Hopefully, for another 55 new years.
Scott Willoughby covers action sports and high-country lifestyle issues for The Denver Post. He can be reached at 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
