What is an "old school telemark ski"- a thread for the real nerds...

[oggopoggo]

Trucker, Phoenix, Mountain Tour? They were all skiable with 3 pins. Buying them didn't mean you could turn them, unlike Tua and K2. The telemark position was not optional. If you didn't know how to stem a turn with the trailing shovel by your boot you might not get off a single turn all day. That's my 2 cents on defining old school skis.

[Olaf]

My first old school telemark skis were the 1984 Rossignol Descente, They were an aluminum sandwich construction with single camber and a 66,55,61 profile. They have the 3 pin Rotteffela Telemark bindings and I skied them with Merrell leather boots. I am going to get them out and try skiing them with my Scarpa T3’s.

[CarlYork]

When I was a kid circa ‘91-93 my mom’s BF skied XCD’s w 3 pins that had a red wire that looped around the heel. His boots were merrells. All leather. Looked like mountaineering boots. You could call that old school. But it was also inferior. He was a really excellent skier. He’d been a patroller at Breckinridge in the late 70’s. He was terrible on those things. Couldn’t keep up w me at age 12. That said. They were pretty good at going sideways.

Telemark has always seemed to be about garage-style innovation. I think that is part of its charm. And I wouldn’t want to exclude any of those people/things bc it wasn’t ‘pure’ enough.

I think it’s because of my age and when I came to telemark but old school to me is some wood-cored tua’s (sumos maybe) and a pair of 3 pin hardwires. And I’m too big and not a good enough skier to ski anything lighter than scarpa T2’s. Whatever pair of black diamond flick-locks I’ve been using for hiking and skiing the last 25 years will do fine

[Chisana]

Well, I am not really a telemarker, just a guy who likes to ski on and off trail. This is my off trail quiver, when I am not on my preferred off trail skis which are wood bones, madshus and tryssil knuts. The monashees are my fatties, and not used much with my 67 year old knees.

[bgregoire]

@lilcliffy,

straight from the mind of our in-house Asnes creator/rep:

"As many know, the Nansen is based on the old classic Nordic Telemark skis, and it has always been "the classic telemarkski for most skiers""

https://telemarktalk.com/viewtopic.php? ... 330#p39683

[lilcliffy]

Yes! For me a long, narrow, round-flexing, low-cambered (and not rockered) ski with a traditional tip like the Nansen- is the quintessential example of an "old-school" Telemark ski.
(I still don't understand why anyone would call a longitudinally-stiff, cambered, XC-focused ski a "Telemark" ski though.. )

[fgd135]

Trucker, Phoenix, Mountain Tour? They were all skiable with 3 pins. Buying them didn't mean you could turn them, unlike Tua and K2. The telemark position was not optional. If you didn't know how to stem a turn with the trailing shovel by your boot you might not get off a single turn all day. That's my 2 cents on defining old school skis.

The Truckers were innovative skis at the time; I worked in a nordic shop in Colorado mountains back then, and we sold all we could get--personally I never thought they were difficult to turn, in fact I felt them much easier turning than the Kazama tele ski, which btw predated the wider yellow Kazamas. No stem turn required, in fact tele racers loved Truckers and won quite a number of events on those skis, and would've lost considerable style points if they'd been stemming the turns.

Artie Burrows and his tele ski buddies from Crested Butte were the driving force behind Trucker skis; maybe Paul Parker, too. Artie and Paul. et al., Murray Cunningham, and Julie Neils were incredible tele skiers. Artie and Paul, and others, raced and designed skis they liked and could turn with the boots and bindings of the day. Trucker was always under-financed, and, iirc, after losing a bid they'd counted on for an Army contract, Trucker faded away. After writing that excellent tome "Free-Heel Skiing : The Secrets of Telemark and Parallel Techniques - In All Conditions", which is a thousand times better than the older "Cross Country Downhill" by Steve Barnett, Paul went on to design skis for Eevon Coonyard, i.e., those first Tua tele skis that were sold in the late 1980's.

[oggopoggo]

I'm glad to hear from someone who was in the heart of telemark. Those guys were our superheroes of the day.
I am surprised they raced on the Trucker though. I found the tip torsionally soft and had to get on to the other ski before the tip wandered off. Different turn shape than racing though. I'd love to have a pair.

I disliked the yellow and later "extreme" (black & brown stripe?) model Kazama skis despite their good reviews. Maybe bindings too far back or just pilot error? Using a binding shift plate it's surprising how different some skis respond to position. I really liked the Rossignol Descente but they weren't the most durable.

[fgd135]

Artie Burrows did the graphics for that great Trucker ad, thanks for posting it. Must've been an early ad, what with that stem turn...
I personally remember all the Kazamas as having very stiff shovels and tails that washed out in the turns, which were completely different flexes than any other tele ski then on the market.
On of my personal faves was the Rossi TRS, from about 1984. It was a rocket for cranking GS turns at speed, but like the slightly later Descente, it was not very durable, using foam core construction. For example, I was night skiing at Eldora on New Year's Eve in 1986, got off the lift, did a few turns, hit an icy rut; the Voile bindings released just as advertised, a leash broke, and one ski took off on the hardpack and skittered into the trees! In the dark! After I stopped sliding on the ice, took some looking a few minutes, but I found it right off the trail. The tip was broken clean off except for the base sheet.
Bent another pair after a hard turn at A Basin, never understood that mechanism, but others bent them, too.

[Tom M]

OK, a walk down memory lane. This is me circa 1973, maybe 1974 on a set of Fischer Europa 77's in the Snowy Range of Wyoming. I'm pretty sure the 77's were one of the first off trail plastic backcountry XC skis. They had an aluminum alloy edge (not steel). They were a huge improvement from my previous wooden skis with a lignostone epoxy edge. It was bye bye pine tar forever. I had to one up my older brother who skied Bonna wooden skis with a segmented steel edge. Check out the bamboo poles with the classic adhesive tape over the "joints" for strength and the home sewn powder suit. I even had a head of hair. This guy couldn't even imagine the amazing gear that is available today.