Telemark Talk / Telemark Tips Forum

First post. Telemarking since 1991. Here I am in Ontario - March 2018 - screenshots from a vid my wife shot.

SLIDING INTO HOMEPLATE
Postcard to Grandpa 1Eye from ski buddies ---- Heidelberg, Germany 1908

I'm pretty sure bier was involved....

Climbing up Tuckerman Ravine yesterday. Skied the Chute. I haven't been here in SIXTEEN YEARS! Time flies! I live in the state!

Woodserson wrote:Climbing up Tuckerman Ravine yesterday. Skied the Chute. I haven't been here in SIXTEEN YEARS! Time flies! I live in the state!

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Awesome stuff Woods! How did the Objectives like the steep terrain? How is the edge hold on that ski? Really cool place, glad to read you got out.

That's impressive, how did the downhill go? What kind of turns did you use?

IT's been 30 years since I've been there. Were you still able to ski all the way to the road?

lowangle al wrote:That's impressive, how did the downhill go? What kind of turns did you use?

IT's been 30 years since I've been there. Were you still able to ski all the way to the road?

It went OK. I skied it better when I was 22. I lost the mental game at the top with the tele turns and paralleled the top and once I got through the steep choke point I put in some tele turns. I am disappointed with myself for losing the mental game and allowing fear to affect my skiing technique, but this was a bit of a mind-demon I had to slay and honestly I'm a year ahead of my goal to ski this stuff on tele gear. I didn't think it was going to happen until 2019.

Conditions were overall very, very nice. (Now is the time to go if anyone local is reading this.) Yesterday there was some very firm under some soft stuff in the shade.

The skis were nice in parallel up high but chattered when I dropped a knee. This was definitely a combination between conditions (the firm in the shade) and operator error. That being said, they are a very very light ski and chattering at these pitches and conditions is something I expected. I needed more weight on the back ski for sure, a deeper squat, and more power forcing myself into shorter radius turns to keep the speed down and then things would have smoothed out. I'd been skiing bumps all week, then I decided to hike up this thing. Energy levels were way down. And that mental thing.

We did ski to the road. Nice bumps down low, good coverage. A little slow, first big warm-up but should corn up nice from here on out. The Little Headwall has open water and probably won't make it much more than a few more days.

I never skied the headwall and I'm not sure I'd try it now, it looks pretty scary. Did you have to worry about self arresting if you fell or was there enough soft snow to slow you down?

lowangle al wrote:I never skied the headwall and I'm not sure I'd try it now, it looks pretty scary. Did you have to worry about self arresting if you fell or was there enough soft snow to slow you down?

I wasn't going to be able to self-arrest if I fell, it would have been right down to the bottom of the bowl if I couldn't stop with the skis. I'm not adept at skiing with an ax and I wasn't going to start then. We purposefully skied in an area with a clearer run-out to not slide into as many rocks if it happened. All this was going through my head on the way up and before I went down- hence the parallel/safe turns. I turned slow and took my time. A train of snowboarders followed us up The Chute and one of them dropped their board from the top. It happens. It became a missile, no one was below fortunately. He down-climbed until he decided to slide down on his ass. That was a dumb move. He's fine and he thought it was grand but a couple of us watched the whole thing from the Lunch Rocks as he narrowly missed some big rocks and bushes. He went feet first controlling speed with his heels... another big dumb move. Great way to ragdoll your way down the wall.

Here's a fun perspective. There are people down there!

Tell you "W"....First time at Tucks and intimidation is the word and Jeebers is this steep or what? Right Gully and flew across toward the headwall and started a turn...The end!...Wizzing by a gigantic line of horrified skiers going up....Missed the lunch rocks and realized I needed lots of steep training before coming back...We did and it was good...

This season has been incredible for me as I explored several XCD ski trails in CO and a few in WY, did a ski hut trip, and towards the end of the season, took a tele lesson. Thats me in Loveland last weekend, on excursions, targas, and piste stinxs. For the next season my goals would be to lower my tele stance, learn parallel turns, get to the ability to tackle blue runs (I am still at greens), explore more backcountry, and to ski down a mountain (not XCD but tele style)!