Tele vs parallel.

[teledance]

Knew an amazing monomark skier who was from N. ID skied with him at Pebble Creek. Guy loved air and his monomark stance, don't know where he is now.
Nice summation on slow speed tele turns Harris. One of these days we should hook up and ski MR or Allpental, unless you want to ski Silver.

[lowangle al]

Harris, I agree that it is much harder to do a carved tele turn than a P turn considering that you have one foot flat on the ski while the other foot only the ball of the foot is on the ski. And like you mentioned you have to distribute your weight on both skis as apposed to only one in a P turn. It can be done, with both skis weighted, edged and flexed equally keeping your skis parallel, eliminating the V shape that at one time was considered part of the T turn.

I also agree that when riding the lift it makes sense to save energy by doing P turns and using T turns where you enjoy them most. On most of my 3 or 4 hour bc tours I have to work pretty hard to get my legs anywhere close to being as burned out as they could be in a couple hours riding the lift.

Knew an amazing monomark skier who was from N. ID skied with him at Pebble Creek. Guy loved air and his monomark stance, don't know where he is now.

He's probably an At skier by now, like most of the old tele skiers up here in AK.

[teledance]

LAAl, you're probably right most of my old tele friends alpine now although many will still tele on occasion, still a few die-hards besides myself out there. Lift operated skiing for Memorial day weekend, yeah Silver.

[Harris]

[quote="lowangle al"] "And like you mentioned you have to distribute your weight on both skis as apposed to only one in a P turn. It can be done, with both skis weighted, edged and flexed equally keeping your skis parallel, eliminating the V shape that at one time was considered part of the T turn."



No offense but I've never heard of a V-shape being part of an advanced-level tele turn, and I've been skiing free-heel since the early 1980s. Like alpine having the skis parallel is just how they function best even when we skied 210cm skinny skis. In fact I would say that today's gear require and allow for less technical skill. Greatly. Regardless, I think you didn't understand what I was getting at. What I meant is that because a tele turn is a two ski turn, and because it is such both skis are weighted, there just simply isn't enough weight applied to either ski to significantly overcome the camber and bow it to its max turn radius, making in the process g-force clean lines in the snow; aka a hard rail arc. Throw in the fact you can't load the tips on initiation or drive the tails on exit and it even more limits a tele carve. That said, you need to realize that I'm making a pretty big distinction here between an edged turn and a true carved turn. A lot of people may get that confused. When I say carved I mean in hip to the snow Ted Ligedy GS sense. Can tele make rail marks? Yes. Lethargic rail marks. But specifically why? Lets say you are skiing a 24 meter turn radius ski, aka GS shaped skis, meaning that 24 meters is the max turn radius the ski is designed to do before the tip and tail can hold no more and releases, using tele you would be hard pressed to get tighter than a 30 meter clean groomer arc from them and what arc you did produce would be progressive as the weight comes on toward the mid point of the turn. Does that make better sense?

[Harris]

Further, one of the reasons I think a slalom course would be a better race platform for tele than GS is because of the way a tele works. Tele skis can rip slalom turn much better than GS. IMO.

[Harris]

Now what is absolutely fun when on fresh groom is to do rail arcs using p turns on tele gear. It can be done very well, but it does require a lot of technique; I'd say much more so than when on alpine gear, which is what makes it so much fun. You can't quite load the tips up on initiation because of the lack of heel lock, but once on edge that no longer matters, it is all about ski loading, knee and hip steering etc, and you can get really good bow out of the boards and drive the heal/tail on exit just like you are Phil Mahre skiing GS on an alpine ski. I've had people totally shocked when after seeing me p-turn race carve they discovered that I was in fact on tele gear. Having a strong alpine race background helps. But despite, I think if anything that is the beauty of the gear; you have a lot of options to play with and I would encourage any intermediate level telemarked to put some serious time in learning how to alpine race turn tele gear.

[phoenix]

Both. Whatever conditions and/or my mood suggest. I would feel (and have felt) very handicapped if I had only one technique to cover all conditions and terrain. I came to tele with a long established alpine background, so parellel was my go-to style from the get go. Had to really work to not instinctively rely on that and make a strong tele turn, but eventually I did.

Whatever works, whatever keeps you happy, whatever keeps you upright. Sometimes parallel, sometimes tele, sometimes survival turns. I've been known to switch techniques mid-turn if conditions dictated.

[lowangle al]

No offence takin, but you never heard that the V shape created sidecut to help turn the skis back in the 80s. I agree that keeping your skis parallel is what we are shooting for today but I don't remember that being promoted back then.

I disagree that you can't get enough weight on both skis to engage your edges enough to carve, although I have felt this with stiff double camber skis. I bet you like stiff skis. I may be wrong but don't you want to be weighting and carving both skis in a P turn too?

[STG]

A perfect day of skiing for me: doing carved telemark turns in wind-blown soft-slab snow on low angle terrain (30 degrees or less) in the backcounty of YNP (no noise, no machines, no people). Enough to keep me satisfied.

[Harris]

No offence takin, but you never heard that the V shape created sidecut to help turn the skis back in the 80s. I agree that keeping your skis parallel is what we are shooting for today but I don't remember that being promoted back then.

Tele skis in the 80s (Kazama, Tua, Rossi, Karhu, Phoenix etc) were all straight cut, 75 mm skis. And they were crazy long too. And despite the technological jumps in gear, even by today's standards guys were ripping on telemarks.The only thing guys weren't doing, because it didn't exist was park skiing and skiing deep pow at the speeds today (because the skis we had available didn't have the float).