Okay, many of you know I’ve bashed telemark bindings over the years because of durability problems that don’t seem to go away. Things have gotten better in that area (perhaps thanks to those of us who had the guts to criticize the things back before the web even existed). Shoot, it’s been at least a season since I was skiing with someone who’s telemark binding broke during a tour. Perhaps that’s why we now have a telemark boom? Or do we? Google the words “telemark boom” to find out, use the quote marks to do an exact match search. Might be amusing.
Some of you might remember a while back when we Googled the term “telemark mecca” and got a ton of hits. Amusing, check it out. Seems like every ski area in the country is or was soon to be a mecca of telemark.
On a subject similar to telemark mecca, I recently noticed yet another article about the “telemark boom.” I’ve been around for a while, and seem to remember a telemark boom that was being touted back in the 1970s. If that’s true, it makes this one of the longest running booms in boom history, and means that nearly everyone on the ski slopes should be on telemark gear. More likely, a bunch of ski writers out there like telemark skiing, and they’re constantly trying to whip up enthusiasm by calling it a “boom” — or at least trying to feel hip about being 50-something and still struggling in difficult snow on their tele gear, while randonnee and snowboard glissers crank circles around them. Okay, boom boom — whatever. Let’s Google it!
Linkin (sorry, their URL appears to be defunct) arrived in the middle of the eighties and described a “boom” on their website. Then we have the “modern boom in Tele skiing” described at Active.com. I was amused by the capitalizing of the word “Tele.” I guess if we’re talking boom, then it should be capitalized! Then there was another now defunct website, Warmpeace, which implied in their content that the style was “newborn” in the 1970s-1980s (lengthy labor, did it need a caesarian?), and that the boom began with plastic telemark boots. So that puts their boom start-date at around 1992, when Scarpa released their monstrous Terminator plastic tele boot. And more. In all, it seems the telemark boom has been happening for at least a decade; longer in some folk’s estimation. So, is this the longest running “boom” in history? Perhaps.
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
