Update from the XCD Knights
Re: Update from the XCD Knights
If you use them for cross country, they are your cross-country ski. On another site some wag stated that E 99's are not cross-country skis because they have metal edges. Wagh! They aren't racing cross country skis that shine on packed tracks. Losers in decent pow. Surface riders, giant skis that keep you on top of pow are not the same as racing downhill skis. For me slicers are the thing. I like being down and in pow and get skis that slice it easily and come around. I love e99's but am not as good as yester year. So have gone to 109's and found that the older model is what I like, the newer model is wider and has rocker. Don't find that much good for cross country skiing. Cross Country skiing is: Up down and all around. My kind of cross-country skiing is setting a track out into Hardwood forests, cruising for miles and not a track in sight. Find a drop with tons of powder and do the Tele deed. Lots of turns, no. But the turn is wonderful with trees reaching out to make it better. Just quiet hissing telemark. A big grin and then use the cruising track back hitting a few more little drops for great feeling. Whatever comes next in your life is better because of it. TM
Re: Update from the XCD Knights
“Interesting” view from the wag on the E99, which is most definitely XC oriented… and one of the best all round XCD skis ever made. Loved that ski.
Ppl sometimes forget that telemark skiing was born from practicality. It was a way of turning a longer ski, with a loaded skier, at relatively modest angles of descent. The gear used to achieve this was XC (k&g) oriented… because the whole system of skiing was originally intended as a means of covering distances on ungroomed natural snow… regardless of terrain features.
Steel edges don’t significantly affect k&g. They add a bit of weight (which is offset today by lighter but stronger materials elsewhere in the ski). So skis with steel edges can be XC oriented, as you already know.
Plan form does affect k&g. Too wide means too much drag. Too much side cut means poor tracking. So at a certain point, the width and shape cease being XC oriented and become downhill (alpine ski) or ultimate weight bearing (ski shoe) oriented.
Same thing for boots. It’s not an issue of materials but functionality. The limited range of motion of a Pebax boot (only 16 degrees for a Scarpa T4, 20 degrees for an TX Comp) affects k&g potential. This is why plastic boots, whether hinged, bellowed or both, are paired with an articulated binding (NTN, TTS, etc) to restore an overall range of motion to something approximating a human foot.
The problem then becomes achieving thrust. Not because of the overall range of motion but in the range of motion between the ball of the foot (from where all bipedal thrust is delivered) and the heel (the angulation of which defines how much leg movement can be translated into forward motion before the ball of the foot lifts from the top sheet). As an example, a TX Comp has a total range of movement of 35 degrees, which is significantly less than a leather, Vibram soled boot.
So while a plastic boot and tele binding as a total range of movement sufficient to allow the execution of a tele turn (aka shins to skis), it has too little at the sole for efficient k&g for the tour.
The same dynamic doesn’t affect the climb. A plastic boot is nominally better due to sole stiffness and its interaction with the riser. But there is added weight to consider, which is costly in a climbing scenario. Still, that system does work better in Alpine Touring (provided the angle is high enough for this attribute to offset the pure touring deficit).
So there is a pivot point between leather and plastic… one that is more sharply defined than the ski width that dominates discussion. Both systems work perfectly well with skis up to ~120mm imo. Wider than that, and the skiing is more likely to be downhill oriented rather than any kind of efficient dynamic touring.
This is where the Knights and enlightened folk like @Woodserson, Johnny, and yourself (@greatgt) seem to be coming from as well.
Ppl sometimes forget that telemark skiing was born from practicality. It was a way of turning a longer ski, with a loaded skier, at relatively modest angles of descent. The gear used to achieve this was XC (k&g) oriented… because the whole system of skiing was originally intended as a means of covering distances on ungroomed natural snow… regardless of terrain features.
Steel edges don’t significantly affect k&g. They add a bit of weight (which is offset today by lighter but stronger materials elsewhere in the ski). So skis with steel edges can be XC oriented, as you already know.
Plan form does affect k&g. Too wide means too much drag. Too much side cut means poor tracking. So at a certain point, the width and shape cease being XC oriented and become downhill (alpine ski) or ultimate weight bearing (ski shoe) oriented.
Same thing for boots. It’s not an issue of materials but functionality. The limited range of motion of a Pebax boot (only 16 degrees for a Scarpa T4, 20 degrees for an TX Comp) affects k&g potential. This is why plastic boots, whether hinged, bellowed or both, are paired with an articulated binding (NTN, TTS, etc) to restore an overall range of motion to something approximating a human foot.
The problem then becomes achieving thrust. Not because of the overall range of motion but in the range of motion between the ball of the foot (from where all bipedal thrust is delivered) and the heel (the angulation of which defines how much leg movement can be translated into forward motion before the ball of the foot lifts from the top sheet). As an example, a TX Comp has a total range of movement of 35 degrees, which is significantly less than a leather, Vibram soled boot.
So while a plastic boot and tele binding as a total range of movement sufficient to allow the execution of a tele turn (aka shins to skis), it has too little at the sole for efficient k&g for the tour.
The same dynamic doesn’t affect the climb. A plastic boot is nominally better due to sole stiffness and its interaction with the riser. But there is added weight to consider, which is costly in a climbing scenario. Still, that system does work better in Alpine Touring (provided the angle is high enough for this attribute to offset the pure touring deficit).
So there is a pivot point between leather and plastic… one that is more sharply defined than the ski width that dominates discussion. Both systems work perfectly well with skis up to ~120mm imo. Wider than that, and the skiing is more likely to be downhill oriented rather than any kind of efficient dynamic touring.
This is where the Knights and enlightened folk like @Woodserson, Johnny, and yourself (@greatgt) seem to be coming from as well.
Go Ski
Re: Update from the XCD Knights
Reflecting on this subject some more, while waiting for snow…
Tele roots are in Nordic skiing, on Nordic skis. The evidence of this is in the words. Telemark = region of southern Norway, which IS a Nordic country. The geography of the Telemark region of Norway is largely mixed. Hills? Sure. Alpine conditions, steep mountains? A few… but we’re not talking the German, Austrian, French, or Swiss Alps, where alpine skiing originated.**
When you combine the Telemark topography with the limited ground infrastructure (cleared roads, rail) of the day made it important for a ski that could more traverse terrain as part of the skier’s daily chores… like hunting and trading.
So if the roots are in Nordic skiing, what is a traditional Nordic ski? Not a historian but my bet is that it was never a skinny ski. Nor was it a short, stiff skating ski, a very long forest ski, or a flat cambered downhill ski. It was a general working ski… of an all round design that could support a skier and pack through reasonably deep snow in valleys and over hills.
If informed voices were able to reimagine things, the term “classic XC” would be rehabilitated. A truly classical XC ski isn’t skinny or stiffly cambered. It was a decathlete capable of moving at reasonable speed over considerable distances. Whether the terrain was flat, rolling, or hilly was irrelevant. Why? It was basic transport. Like a car or truck, but not dependent on passable roads. And when was the last time anyone considered, or commented, on the hill climbing ability of either outside of specialized sporting events like Pike’s Peak?
A “classic” ski, therefore, is a working man’s ski. Emphasis on work. It isn’t, or wasn’t, sporting ski or even a racing ski.
Diagonal stride, skating are just descriptors of movement. But as Nordic skis became optimized for movement over *prepared* surfaces, they exchanged one set of attributes for another. Weight bearing on soft snow became irrelevant because everything was compressed in advance. Camber and camber stiffness grew to manage energy… because it didn’t really do anything to enhance grip. Lightness became an attribute because varied snow or crud simply didn’t exist on a properly groomed surface.
So the marketing term “classic XC” trivializes how skis were once used for practical purposes like travelling, exploring, or commuting. Just like today’s use of the term “Telemark set up” frames things in ways that get closer to Alpine skiing every day.
Oh wait… “Alpine”? That’s heresay. Don’t you mean “Alpine Touring”? Nope. Alpine touring suggests human power for the entire route… a tour being a round trip of sorts… a circuit. The vast majority of skiers use a lift to get to the top of a hill that they subsequently “descend”. The tour, or circuit, has nothing to do with it. This is something that ski companies figured out a long time ago, which is why the differences between general purpose AT and Alpine skis are very small indeed.
And while on the subject of tele skis, let’s not forget Sondre Auverson (“son of Auver” aka Sondre Norheim, a name he gave himself in adulthood). His creation was the telemark ski. Not the alpine ski, which was already available (he skied alpine skis himself and, if he had found them suitable for tele, wouldn’t have needed to invent anything. Right?).
Now let’s look at his monument and creation… while assuming that the people who commissioned and created the monument knew more about Sondre than anyone reading this…
Does this look anything like an alpine ski? Or is it close to a Nordic ski (setting aside that, definitionally, a ski invented by a Norwegian for skiing in Norway could legitimately be called a “Nordic” ski in the most generic sense). Notice the length… hand high. Very much like the traditional way of sizing an XC ski.
What about sidecut? See any of that? It looks like a traditional XC platform to me. And why not? Parabolic skis didn’t enter the market until after Elan developed them in the early 90s.
So if Tele has its roots in Nordic skiing (which is historically and geographically indisputable), then what is it besides just a free heel turn? This is an important question that touches on the definition of sports.
Sports are like circuits in a way. They start and finish in the same place, defined by the totality of what occurs between these two points. Like football, were offense and defense are both part of the game. Or baseball, which occurs whether the team is at bat or in the field. Or hockey, whose activities are divided by trying to score and trying to stop the other team from scoring in a very dynamic manner.
If it in any way respects its past, traditional Tele is XCD over moderate terrain featuring a style of turn. This distinguishes it from what is popularly known today as “classic XC” (a circuit sport but on artificially created surfaces) and Alpine (not a circuit, artificial surfaces). It also separates skiers into three easily defined groups… people who don’t know of to execute a tele trun, people who can execute a tele turn on whatever free help setup they’re using, and people who telemark ski by staying true to its roots.
There is no value judgments assigned to any of these groups. They are merely descriptions of “what is”. Not “what is best”.
If there is any truth in what’s written above (the geographical and historical references are indisputable), then we must challenge how the ski industry markets tele. Doing that will liberate practitioners from feeling left behind by a bunch of manufacturers who seemingly don’t understand how to market their wares to real telemark skiers as well as they do so-called classic XC or downhill in all of its forms (the latter which actually includes AT for anyone taking lifts above a tree line).
A lot of it gets back to what was written by the Knights. Maybe they should be put in charge of marketing tele equipment… so we can get past the ridiculous ad copy of the industry that stopped thinking about tele because it was easier to:
(1) push AT gear to two different groups of skiers by changing a word or two in the way the products are marketed or
(2) slap a steel edge onto a narrow cambered ski and call it a day.
The fact is that tele has betrayed such easy definitions because it is neither a race technique nor a stylistic one, it is a practical turn, necessitated by the gear and not facilitated by it. So people who buy gear to make tele “easier” might actually betray the turn itself. It’s not meant to be easy. If it were easy, legions of skiers would have naturally done it long before the son of Auver came along.
The fact that this more or less aligns with the Knights’ view isn’t a coincidence. A great deal of thought has gone into what’s been written about their PoV.
Does this mean everything above is right? Absolutely not. But it’s should be part of the conversation because it challenges several popular views that do not appear to be correct.
** What about fjell skiing? Fjell means mountain, doesn’t it? But this reinforces my point… if telemark skis came from alpine roots, wouldn’t they all be called “fjell skis”, or have “fjell” somewhere in its name? You would think so…. Sure, one or two skis suitable for telemark may be have fjell in their name, but the vast majority of skis suitable for telemark skiing don’t even make an oblique reference to it. So while Nordic skis describe a very broad range of ski types, fjell skis are much more tightly constrained in context. And that context does not encompass telemark. It just overlaps it on the margins.
Tele roots are in Nordic skiing, on Nordic skis. The evidence of this is in the words. Telemark = region of southern Norway, which IS a Nordic country. The geography of the Telemark region of Norway is largely mixed. Hills? Sure. Alpine conditions, steep mountains? A few… but we’re not talking the German, Austrian, French, or Swiss Alps, where alpine skiing originated.**
When you combine the Telemark topography with the limited ground infrastructure (cleared roads, rail) of the day made it important for a ski that could more traverse terrain as part of the skier’s daily chores… like hunting and trading.
So if the roots are in Nordic skiing, what is a traditional Nordic ski? Not a historian but my bet is that it was never a skinny ski. Nor was it a short, stiff skating ski, a very long forest ski, or a flat cambered downhill ski. It was a general working ski… of an all round design that could support a skier and pack through reasonably deep snow in valleys and over hills.
If informed voices were able to reimagine things, the term “classic XC” would be rehabilitated. A truly classical XC ski isn’t skinny or stiffly cambered. It was a decathlete capable of moving at reasonable speed over considerable distances. Whether the terrain was flat, rolling, or hilly was irrelevant. Why? It was basic transport. Like a car or truck, but not dependent on passable roads. And when was the last time anyone considered, or commented, on the hill climbing ability of either outside of specialized sporting events like Pike’s Peak?
A “classic” ski, therefore, is a working man’s ski. Emphasis on work. It isn’t, or wasn’t, sporting ski or even a racing ski.
Diagonal stride, skating are just descriptors of movement. But as Nordic skis became optimized for movement over *prepared* surfaces, they exchanged one set of attributes for another. Weight bearing on soft snow became irrelevant because everything was compressed in advance. Camber and camber stiffness grew to manage energy… because it didn’t really do anything to enhance grip. Lightness became an attribute because varied snow or crud simply didn’t exist on a properly groomed surface.
So the marketing term “classic XC” trivializes how skis were once used for practical purposes like travelling, exploring, or commuting. Just like today’s use of the term “Telemark set up” frames things in ways that get closer to Alpine skiing every day.
Oh wait… “Alpine”? That’s heresay. Don’t you mean “Alpine Touring”? Nope. Alpine touring suggests human power for the entire route… a tour being a round trip of sorts… a circuit. The vast majority of skiers use a lift to get to the top of a hill that they subsequently “descend”. The tour, or circuit, has nothing to do with it. This is something that ski companies figured out a long time ago, which is why the differences between general purpose AT and Alpine skis are very small indeed.
And while on the subject of tele skis, let’s not forget Sondre Auverson (“son of Auver” aka Sondre Norheim, a name he gave himself in adulthood). His creation was the telemark ski. Not the alpine ski, which was already available (he skied alpine skis himself and, if he had found them suitable for tele, wouldn’t have needed to invent anything. Right?).
Now let’s look at his monument and creation… while assuming that the people who commissioned and created the monument knew more about Sondre than anyone reading this…
What about sidecut? See any of that? It looks like a traditional XC platform to me. And why not? Parabolic skis didn’t enter the market until after Elan developed them in the early 90s.
So if Tele has its roots in Nordic skiing (which is historically and geographically indisputable), then what is it besides just a free heel turn? This is an important question that touches on the definition of sports.
Sports are like circuits in a way. They start and finish in the same place, defined by the totality of what occurs between these two points. Like football, were offense and defense are both part of the game. Or baseball, which occurs whether the team is at bat or in the field. Or hockey, whose activities are divided by trying to score and trying to stop the other team from scoring in a very dynamic manner.
If it in any way respects its past, traditional Tele is XCD over moderate terrain featuring a style of turn. This distinguishes it from what is popularly known today as “classic XC” (a circuit sport but on artificially created surfaces) and Alpine (not a circuit, artificial surfaces). It also separates skiers into three easily defined groups… people who don’t know of to execute a tele trun, people who can execute a tele turn on whatever free help setup they’re using, and people who telemark ski by staying true to its roots.
There is no value judgments assigned to any of these groups. They are merely descriptions of “what is”. Not “what is best”.
If there is any truth in what’s written above (the geographical and historical references are indisputable), then we must challenge how the ski industry markets tele. Doing that will liberate practitioners from feeling left behind by a bunch of manufacturers who seemingly don’t understand how to market their wares to real telemark skiers as well as they do so-called classic XC or downhill in all of its forms (the latter which actually includes AT for anyone taking lifts above a tree line).
A lot of it gets back to what was written by the Knights. Maybe they should be put in charge of marketing tele equipment… so we can get past the ridiculous ad copy of the industry that stopped thinking about tele because it was easier to:
(1) push AT gear to two different groups of skiers by changing a word or two in the way the products are marketed or
(2) slap a steel edge onto a narrow cambered ski and call it a day.
The fact is that tele has betrayed such easy definitions because it is neither a race technique nor a stylistic one, it is a practical turn, necessitated by the gear and not facilitated by it. So people who buy gear to make tele “easier” might actually betray the turn itself. It’s not meant to be easy. If it were easy, legions of skiers would have naturally done it long before the son of Auver came along.
The fact that this more or less aligns with the Knights’ view isn’t a coincidence. A great deal of thought has gone into what’s been written about their PoV.
Does this mean everything above is right? Absolutely not. But it’s should be part of the conversation because it challenges several popular views that do not appear to be correct.
** What about fjell skiing? Fjell means mountain, doesn’t it? But this reinforces my point… if telemark skis came from alpine roots, wouldn’t they all be called “fjell skis”, or have “fjell” somewhere in its name? You would think so…. Sure, one or two skis suitable for telemark may be have fjell in their name, but the vast majority of skis suitable for telemark skiing don’t even make an oblique reference to it. So while Nordic skis describe a very broad range of ski types, fjell skis are much more tightly constrained in context. And that context does not encompass telemark. It just overlaps it on the margins.
Go Ski
Re: Update from the XCD Knights
None of this is a new thought. This was written and posted back in 2015…
It, and the author, can be found easily enough.
Go Ski