An Ode to the Unconcerned Telemark Skier

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The ski culture can be rife with obsessions that fall well outside of the actual act of skiing. While most find their transcendence through actually skiing, gear guides proliferate while social media bombards us with footage. Through it all, having the right setup and looking a certain way has a certain importance in the subculture.

But there’s a rare type of individual in the ski world, one not affected by these ebbing tides of things popular or in. This is a different sort, whose motivations come not from what they see on the internet or in ski movies, but from somewhere more rarefied. And we are losing them in these modern times as the zeitgeist turns ever away from their ambiance. It’s not for the better that they are fading into history.

You may have seen them from time to time, still a fixture at small ski areas, the greyer often helmetless, maybe donning old gear you haven’t seen before. And the younger ones are there, too, more recently genuflecting, typically on second-hand equipment, unaware (or unconcerned) with the newest advents and styles. Mostly you might find them far away from the lifts, in the rolling, wooded backcountry, where their crosscountry-oriented hunt for turns represents a dogma that the mainstream in skiing never took to.

This skier isn’t on Instagram or Facebook – by their nature they are disconnected from much besides word of mouth and their own intuition. This is an ode – and I hope not a eulogy – to the unconcerned telemark skier.

The unconcerned telemark skier knows little of the latest in gear and culture, and frankly they seem better for it. While most of us free-heelers (including yours truly) are waxing on about what gear we wish we had, these skiers are in the moment, often on trusty 3 pin bindings and low-cut plastic boots. They may even be spotted on leathers from time to time. While we the modern types often recoil at such notions, this seems to detract little from their experience. In fact, it may be integral to it. While we fill our bandwidth with concerns over non-skiing minutia, the unconcerned telemark skier marks a counterpoint by simply being.

Some of this cadre also belong to the equally endangered working class in ski towns – one pinner I rode up with recently was a spindly and rugged seventy-year-old who had finally semi-retired from decades of pouring concrete. All he wanted to ski on – all he needed – was his old Voile bindings. He had been skiing on that setup for thirty years.

These skiers and their loose ethos – which seems to render any marketing push ineffective once it reaches their ears; their disregard for style or conspicuous consumption refreshingly anachronistic – are a vestige of a different time in skiing in general but they have even become outliers in telemark. The unconcerned telemarkers are what’s left of the primordial vibe that countercultural skiing took before the muddying effects of over-saturated gear options, prior to social media obsession; a milieu that long predates the scourge of smartphones.

Having little ability to tap into their responsibly tight wallets, marketers have left them to their own devices. And with no desire for either an online presence or stature in a modern, cool movement in skiing, the mainstream ski scene itself has little tolerance for them. Few know what to make of this type, who on the surface seem to stubbornly hold on to gear that holds them back, who to the uninitiated seem detached to the point of neurosis. But ignorant these points both are.

The unconcerned telemark skier marks a needed departure from the mainstream in the ski world. A vision of a different sort of ski existence can be seen through them – one where gear determinism and a cool-or-die mandate doesn’t exist, where authenticity and hard work wins out over new-kit-day and the constant need to buy.

Still, the unconcerned telemark skier remains often misunderstood. They can be cast off at times by fellow free-heelers, who feel their stinginess keeps the subculture’s economy from providing innovation. The younger vanguard can take to calling them beaters, wondering inarticulately why their Targas are in a bunch, making little effort to understand this rare breed, knowing precious little that their now rarely trodden path offers a refreshing differentiation to a modern ski narrative and its contemporary pitfalls.

We need gear to do what we do outdoors, certainly in winter. Without inventions like GoreTex and edged skis and the ability to purchase them, we would be left haplessly flailing, mostly relegated to an inability to take part in the very thing we find transcendence in.

But the slope is indeed slippery, and the Unconcerned Telemark Skier offers an alternative to over-consumption and adherence to not only rigid gear, but an inelastic ethos that puts style over substance. In a ski world – not to mention larger culture – where the notions of counterculture seems to have been left decidedly in the past, this specimen is an artifact that reminds the greater ski world that a different path can indeed be taken, and perhaps it would benefit the ski world if more took to it.

Telemark today finds itself at an inflection point, and as such is subject to endless internal debate. What is the way forward for the ancient, heady turn? These discourses continue, often in the wilds that is the internet. Some of these discussions do become productive, deeply analyzing the telemark experience, looking for the path forward in the most metacognitive ways, asking what innovative gear or what evolving ethos may help bring telemark into modernity, ensuring its future with a new generation of participants.

But on the fringes exists a skier not prone to such liaisons – fruitful or not. They are out there just to ski. And long may they join us, whether riding lifts or out beyond the boundaries of the resorts. While their gear may seem silly and their detachment stubborn to those of us all too used to life insulated from the esoteric, what they remind us of is too important to let go of – that the individual’s experience and the full immersion in the moment - not the extraneous – is what matters. Let us long be graced with the Unconcerned Telemark Skier and their vibe.