Telemark Talk / Telemark Tips Forum

Good morning folks.

I'm becoming plastic boot / "up down" touring curious

I have rented AT set ups, NTN set ups, done my local fire roads and XCD trails and practice hills.
Last setup I rented was a Fischer Hannibal 96 with a Scott Cosmos III boot and Dynafit somethingorother ... the Scott boot (maybe all rental boots in general) are total dogs. So heavy and uncomfortable "on the up" ... not tele gear but still.

Can someone who has never resort skied become a competent BC skier without going and lapping the local mountain?

Advice for someone who has never done lift service skiing who is also interested in branching out to more touring for turns?

I was recently reading another forum. The poster was relating his experience. He was a backcountry skier his entire life. He had been an Alaskan guide, getting people up and down big mountains in the wilderness. Now he’s retired in the lower 48, and riding chairs. He was commenting on that his skiing is really improving.

As far as becoming confident in your downhill/turning abilities, a 1/2 day, or a few of 'em, at any resort will greatly speed up the process. You'll make more turns, in (at least somewhat) more consistent conditions, than many, many days in the backcountry, on more varied snow... which is a much slower learning curve.

If that's not a good option, yo-yoing a bunch of laps on a comfortable slope in the BC, concentrating on making turns, will also help a lot. You need practice and repetition to develop the skills you're looking for.

Landscraper wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 13, 2021 9:03 am

Good morning folks.

I'm becoming plastic boot / "up down" touring curious

I have rented AT set ups, NTN set ups, done my local fire roads and XCD trails and practice hills.
Last setup I rented was a Fischer Hannibal 96 with a Scott Cosmos III boot and Dynafit somethingorother ... the Scott boot (maybe all rental boots in general) are total dogs. So heavy and uncomfortable "on the up" ... not tele gear but still.

Can someone who has never resort skied become a competent BC skier without going and lapping the local mountain?

Advice for someone who has never done lift service skiing who is also interested in branching out to more touring for turns?

You will get there a lot quicker with plastic boots but like Fishes post above states it could take years to be an expert (but not as long to become proficient) when just in the back country.

It's largely a matter of vertical feet skied. If you can ski 20,000' in a day at the resort and only 2,000 in the bc it will take ten times as long for the same experience. I do think you learn more in the bc per foot than at the resort but not by all that much.. Not having alpine resort experience also works against you since you will have to learn how to edge and carve skis as well as how to negotiate terrain.

When I was learning in the bc I did a lot of laps. Reskiing the same hill allows you to control some of the variables, like conditions and slope angle, and concentrate on how to make your gear work and experiment with that. You will also learn a lot more in good conditions than on bad conditions and if you can't find good conditions in the bc you won't learn as much.

I skied 10 years xc in Pa. followed by 5 years on dbl camber tele skis on trails and some resort. Then 10 years in Ak. skiing weekends on mostly trails not doing many laps because the wife wasn't into it. It wasn't until I got a seasonal job and skied bc almost every day from November to May and switched to a single camber ski and skied a lot of laps that that I really knew what I was doing. A few years after that I switched to plastic boots and upgraded to wider skis and had to put in my time to become proficient on it. To speed up the process I sacrificed my time and money at the resort. For a few seasons I may have gone almost twenty days a year at the resort(all powder days) to figure out the heavy gear and also spend more time in the steep and deep. After those few seasons I went back to skiing laps and bc tours almost exclusively.

what is your general history with skiing of any kind? are you brand new to all kinds of skiing? or are you crossing over from pure nordic? if you are a true beginner, you need to learn a few kinds of things: 1) efficiency on flats 2) going uphill 3) going downhill. I am new to going uphill on tele/AT, but I have decades of nordic, alpine and tele skiing experience. what I can tell you from my experience is that skinning uphill is the easiest skill to learn. there is some technique you must learn, but in many cases, going up is much like hiking with skis( when skinning).

I would say the the next "easiest" skill to learn is moving across flats. ideally you want to get some amount of glide to help you cover distance more quickly and efficiently. on BC/AT/Tele gear, you won't ever glide like a nordic racer, but you want to think about some glide, not just a pure shuffle or taking steps on flats.

downhill is the hardest skill to learn because equipment, terrain and snow conditions matter so much. if you are new to skiing, especially downhill, you want to learn what I call "survival downhill turns". they are not always pretty, and you won't have your boots glued together, you may not even be tele turning, but what you want to learn is edge control which leads to speed control. basically its about becoming safe going down. safe = speed control and being able to turn when and where you want to( or need to), and doing so in a competent way...looks and style are secondary. for example, watch any skimo race video. these guys are experts, but they will never win any style points going down. but what they can do is control speed and control turns, no matter what it actually looks like.

I don't think I've ever taught anyone to ski, but my theory is this: 1) learn downhill survival turns on groomed trails 2) learn efficiency on flats on groomed trails 3) learn uphill skinning on whatever terrain is available( as long as you can safely go down). learn the 3 basic techniques in easier conditions, then modify/adapt to the backcountry.....my theory is simply: if you cannot do the basics on groomed terrain, its only harder when snow conditions are variable and you have trees, rocks and other obstacles that dictate to you when you must turn.

Wow, thank you to everyone, I'm grateful to have the wealth of perspective.

@bauerb

My background prior to last season was purely seasonal / recreational touring center XC skate and classic skiing.
I'd say I did it mostly to keep up with my partner as she trained for biathlon. For those of you who are familiar with the VT area I toured a lot at Morse Farm on both sides of the road.

We moved to VT and I've been daily skiing the woodlots and snowmobile trails for two seasons now (usually I put in an hour to and hour and a half each day), there's a lot of varied terrain and I've been able to work on everything from kick turning, tele turning, "parallel" turning, skating (even on the T78), and of course kicking and gliding and temperature specific waxing of my tips and tails.

My usual daily ski is a gentle 500' of descent across a few "whoppers" of logging roads / sugaring roads / and snow mobile trails. Occasionally the conditions are good enough that I can try my hand at skiing the drainages and modest downhill runs at nearby camps. For instance here is a picture of my laps from today using a rented AT setup just messing around before I have to take them back trying as many different ways to edge them as I could think of in as short a run as I have on that lil hill
Occasionally I lay a kick turn track up this hill in my traverse 78's and soft boot and attempt the same laps and repetition just with the ultralight gear. Here's a particularly good day tele'ing a local baby bowl
I'd say I have a solid foundation of nordic skiing, BC nordic terrain negotiation, and competent abilities on the kinds of trail skiing we have here in VT (Beaver Meadow, Catamount Trail, MTB trail skiing, Class 4 road skiing) ... I'm just not a very finely tuned downhill machine (as I'm sure the spastic nature of the turns in the picture can highlight).

@lowangle al @fisheater thanks for the perspective. I can definitely see the advantage of foundational skills built in a lift serve setting

@phoenix I agree ... I'm hoping that a lot of laps at some of the managed BC zones and forest service roads that feed up to higher elevation trailheads in my area can help without the financial sting of ponying up for a season pass somewhere ... appreciate the advice!

I think I want to grab a used set up this summer / fall and try my hand at skinning the local resorts on this heavier gear.

Hell I might even try a half day at Burke or a smaller mountain to really get a sense of what it's all about.

Appreciate everyone weighing in, having a lot to learn is exciting

I am your exact opposite. most of my life, i was a recreational resort skiier on a downhill setup in heavy plastic boots. I had a hard time going to the backcountry as it is just different. resorts are good because you get easily 10x the downhill experience, however the terrain is artificial...those mountains have been worked on big time. you don't get that in the backcountry. you have to be more methodical and ski slower coming down as there are natural obstacles and features not present at a resort.

my classic ski experience has been slow progress. was supposed to get private lessons last yr but covid put a stop to that. so im really slow on nordic skis on flat and uphill terrain...but surprisingly fast going downhill... in fact at the local nordic trail system where our world cup guys train, i was surprised to find that on one of the downhill segments on strava my time is barely slower than the top 10. (top is 46sec, 10th is 56sec. my time is 1:06). the 10th place guy wins all kinds of mountain races. crazy. this tells me that my downhill skiing experience at the resort has paid off. to put things in perspective, the total time on that whole loop is 16mins for 1st place. it takes me 48mins!!

so i recommend u go to the resort and get in plastic boots and ski...alot.

you obviously have no problems going uphill and being in good shape, so downhill will be your limitation because u arent used to skiing 1000s of vertical of really steep terrain.

overall, the transition will be easier for you. you have better coordination and are used to skinny skis. for me, going from fat skis to skinnies was an eye opener...lots of bruises.

if u can, buy a used downhill setup and hit the resort alot for 1-2 seasons. you will be a pro.

have fun!

I think it depends on your expectations of how elegantly you want to ski, and your capacity for frustration. I’d agree with others on both points: lift service is the fastest way to make a variety of nice turns second nature, and that even expert piste skiers often get a rude surprise when in the BC.

My wife and I were out last weekend for 5 hours of breakable crust over facets. The weekend prior it was hero powder... but the avy forecast said flats only, so it was also a slog. The terrain is just so varied and the only thing lift service practice will do is free up some mental capacity so you don’t have to think about your skis all the time. But that *is* an advantage. Personally, I’d just spend the time outside, wallow, fall, and struggle and just take it as it comes and just be realistic about the long learning curve.

The one other thing I’ll add: I couldn’t figure out how to turn skinny skis until I got good at turning fatter ones. Double cambered skinnies are just too punishing of anything wrong. Once I felt really good about turning a downhill ski in a plastic boot I could start making a variety of turns on my mountain race 48s with alaskas.

I started tele skiing on leather boots and almost zero sidecut skinny skis, without any previous experience making turns; after struggling up and down in backcountry settings, the best thing I ever did was to take some tele lessons, and spend a season riding lifts and making turns in all kinds of snow conditions--not only nice groomers, but on days with nasty crusty windblown snow, powder, junk wet snow, ice, steeps, trees, you name it.
As you become more comfortable, make turns wearing a pack with all the backcountry gear you would normally carry.
Practice ten turns a day in the woods, or hundreds of turns a day riding lifts. Skills learned this way will pay off many times over.
Mix it up with backcountry skiing; long tours, and so on, for fitness, and by all means take an avalanche awareness class or two.