A Short History of Telemark Equipment

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Telemark skiing’s essence is epitomized by the free-heel binding. It is the advent that sets the turn apart from other modes of downhill snow travel. And this style of binding - long evolving over eons - has reached a new level of modernity, one that promises stronger edge engagement, lighter weight, and a parity with alpine touring equipment and its features.

But long before, when ancient humans were focused on simply subsisting, the first free-heel bindings were affixed to skis used for overland winter travel in the high, snowy latitudes. Cave paintings in the Altay of Northern China, thought to be 5,000 years old, depict people on skis, while a plank from Lake Sindor in Northern Russia has been dated to roughly 6,000 BCE. The peoples of Scandinavia had also long used ski and free-heel binding, including in the region of Telemark. Here, in the mid-1800s, a man named Sondre Norheim began a shift that would usher in the era of skiing as sport.

Known as the father of the telemark turn, Norheim perfected the downhill, free-hill technique. A free-heel genius, Norheim also developed skis with sidecut, and, as Brad English detailed in his 1984 book Total Telemarking, created a new and improved telemark binding.

“What made the boys from Telemark the king-of-the-ski-hill was Norheim’s invention of a superior binding to go along with his refined technique,” wrote English, continuing, “by soaking thin birch roots in hot water to make them pliable, and then twisting them together to form a tight rope that ran from the toe-plate around the heel, he was able to achieve an unparalleled degree of unity between foot and ski.” Norheim had created a robust, downhill-oriented cable binding – more than 100 years ahead of its time.

While the telemark technique enjoyed decades as the preferred method of downhill skiing, it was eventually replaced by a newer method developed in the high peaks of continental Europe. With fixed heels and an innovative procedure for progressing from wedged turns to parallel – the Arlberg – alpine skiing came to supplant telemark as the preferred style of downhill skiing.

While the alpine technique was becoming the dominant form of downhill skiing, a cross-country binding came into being that would eventually have deep ramifications for telemark skiing. Norwegian firm Rottefella introduced its 75mm-wide 3-pin-attachment binding in 1927. Known as the Nordic Norm, for nearly 100 years, cross-country skiing predominantly took place on these bindings, complete with duckbilled boots that slid into their wide toe piece. Across the Atlantic, some fifty years after 75mm bindings first saw reality, an experimental journey would result in an American rediscovery of the telemark downhill technique.

A contingent of Crested Butte skiers, including Doug Buzzell, Craig Hall, Greg Dalbey, Jack Marcial, and Rick Borkovec, looked out at the Elk Mountains of Central Colorado and dreamed of skiing their steep faces and virgin snow. It was the early 1970s, a time before easily available alpine touring equipment, and their best option to ski the backcountry was using cross-country gear – leather boots and skinny, long skis mounted with free-heel 75mm bindings. While that gear helped them travel into the backcountry, a downhill technique was at first elusive. Legend has it that someone in the group found an old photograph of Stein Eriksen’s father practicing a telemark turn. Using that free-heel, downhill technique, these Crested Butte skiers are often credited with starting the first wave of American telemark skiing, one of many independent takes on the sport in this country.

What followed was decades of counterculture powder hunting on 3-pin bindings by the first crop of American telemark skiers. The vibe was decidedly non-mainstream, and the gear was by its nature less rigid than alpine, requiring astute technique. The learning curve was indeed steep, but true to their nature, telemark skiers, then without much of an industry to support their fresh take on skiing, created work-arounds. Many affixed homemade plastic cuffs around their ankles for added resistance and stability from the boot. And more resistive features started to be added to the 3-pin bindings, like Voile’s 3-Pin Cable binding, introduced in 1989, adding more stability to the free-heel turn more than a century after Sondre Norheim created his birch root binding.

Spring-loaded cartridges were eventually added to the bindings, like in the SuperLoop from Russell Rainey’s Rainey Designs. A block of cartridges sat over the toe, connecting to a heel-wrapping cable. This marked the first use of a compression spring in a telemark binding, one of many firsts the SuperLoop brought to free-heel gear.

Everything changed when Scarpa introduced the Terminator – the first all-plastic telemark boot – in 1993. Telemark emerged from the leathery countercultural shadows and entered a mainstream-adjacent paradigm, one that increasingly valued resistance and leverage in the gear to bridge the steep learning curve and allow for more aggressive skiing a la alpine.

Bindings like G3 Targa, with its iconic red toe plate, adorned many a telemark ski in the 90s to 2000s. The Targa did away with the pins and moved the cartridges to either side of the foot. But the leverage revolution brought about by plastic boots found its pièce de résistance with another groundbreaking binding from Russell Rainey – The Hammerhead. Writing a review of the binding’s beta program in 2001 in Couloir, Craig Dostie said “the Hammerhead must be doing something dramatically different than other bindings. It is. The key elements are a 6 inch spring with a full two inches of travel (so you can’t bottom it out) and a cable that’s routed underfoot.” This brought an unprecedented control in telemark bindings coupled with the sweet sensation inherent in duckbilled boots; the Hammerhead was the 75mm darling of the plastic boot revolution and is still skied today by many a telemarker.

What came next in telemark bindings resulted in a schism that has abated somewhat, but still hangs onto the sport to this day. That was Rottefella’s 2007 introduction of the platform that was designed to replace downhill, 75mm bindings – the New Telemark Norm (NTN).

Though NTN bindings immediately granted an improved downhill performance by doing away with a cable/cartridge system and replacing it with a robust underfoot platform connection, the system initially ran into lukewarm support. Coupled with the system’s backward incompatibility (a duckbill boot couldn't work in an NTN binding), the new rigid bindings gave a skiing sensation many found foreign. Many skiers attempting the switch were rebuffed by the stiffness of the NTN platform and the learning curve the new norm required, not to mention the expenditure needed for new boots with the bindings. But NTN also wasn’t always given a fair shot - many wrote-off the new norm without actually trying it. It was an underwhelming start to the supposed revolution, and many in the telemark community swore off the new norm wholesale, vowing never to switch. So the long uphill road began for NTN.

All this contributed to telemark’s humbled status of the late 2000s. Telemark had seemingly entered a sort of Dark Age, with fewer participants and many a declaration of its death. But two hugely consequential innovations took place during this time that would allow the new vanguard in bindings to finally supplant 75mm as the telemark platform of the future.

First was Mark Lengel’s Telemark Tech System (TTS) introduced in 2011. His system was the first to use a Dynafit tech-toe in a telemark binding, combining the premier technology of the alpine touring world with a cable/cartridge heel attachment for free-heel turns. Second was the 2014 launch by longtime telemark manufacturer 22 Designs (the company Rainey Designs became) of the preeminent NTN binding, the Outlaw X. The TTS system was proof that the tech toe piece for backcountry touring could work for telemark, while the Outlaw X – the late-coming supreme NTN binding – finally brought the new norm into maturity. These changes showed just how versatile the NTN platform could be, skiing and touring capably, and moved telemark toward a modern gear paradigm.

The revolution continued with the combination of these innovations – the creation of the NTN tech binding. Not long after the Outlaw X was released, a small French firm then known as The M Equipment (now InWild) led by engineer Pierre Mouyade released the Meidjo, a telemark binding that combined the two-pin toe with an NTN connection.

This combination created a telemark system that achieved a sort of parity with alpine touring bindings, which had long bested telemark in weight, touring efficiency, and features. The Meidjo allowed for ski brakes and safety release. But, like Mark Lengel’s original TTS, the binding also granted supreme tourability and higher downhill performance through better power transmission via the two-pins, eliminating slop in the turn. This brought the potential level of skiing to a new level with the features and usability of alpine bindings. A new vision of the future of telemark emerged, one without the disadvantages compared to alpine touring equipment, something that had long dogged telemark gear.

The incorporation of the tech toe into telemark bindings coupled with the maturity of the NTN platform represents a sea change in free-heel binding technology and marks a full entrance into a modern state. Voile has joined in on the new wave with their Transit TTS, released this fall. This binding is the first TTS binding widely available at retail, and without the DIY bent that earlier iterations of the system required.

While bindings have entered the new age, a boot bottleneck continues to be a reality in telemark, with DIY and old-stock workarounds becoming routine for telemark skiers. That soon may be alleviated somewhat. Each fall for nearly ten years, rumors have swelled that Scarpa would finally announce a new, modern telemark boot. And talk has swirled anew that the time may finally soon arrive for the telemark faithful. The coming boot promises to join the new crop of bindings and complete telemark’s modern retail facing, though the expectations of the entire community now rest on this single piece of footwear, whenever it comes to light, begging the other boot manufacturers to follow suit.

Downhill skiing on free-heel gear is epitomized by the notion that more can be done with less and equipment drawbacks can be worked around via determination, technique, and DIY solutions. But that paradigm has now been augmented by a truly modern stable of available telemark bindings – and now a boot to go with. This gear offers best-in-class touring capabilities, and skis exceptionally well – it has completely dismantled any notion that telemark equipment is stuck in previous generations.

Resting on a foundation thousands of years old, free-heel equipment has evolved greatly over some 150 years of recent progress, and this newest cohort represents a marked step into modernity for telemark gear.