randonee or tele?

what's your preference and why? Looking to get back into skiing. I've snowboarded for the last 13ish years. Buddy is trying to talk me into a pair of telemark skis. At one point I was half way decent on a pair of alpine skis. It was so long ago though I've never even been on shape skis.

Nick Mardirosian wrote:what's your preference and why? Looking to get back into skiing. I've snowboarded for the last 13ish years. Buddy is trying to talk me into a pair of telemark skis. At one point I was half way decent on a pair of alpine skis. It was so long ago though I've never even been on shape skis.

I should add my uses. Primarily resort with some sidecountry looking to eventually get into some hut to hut stuff

If you have experience alpine skiing, I'd go with AT gear. That way you don't have to learn a whole new technique.

Mike McL wrote:If you have experience alpine skiing, I'd go with AT gear. That way you don't have to learn a whole new technique.

is there any advantage to telemark though? Im not opposed to learning something new.

I am in the same boat as you, I am going tele. Not really any specific reason, just want a new challenge and atleast in socal the mountain isn't littered with tele skiers.

When I worked at a ski shop the ski tech always made his sales by telling customers "Randonee is french for I can't tele".

I do both. Love the feeling of the tele turn. It's an incredibly poetic feeling that creates more of a dance with the terrain.

Alright, enough touchy feely talk. It's nice to lock the heel down and have a bit more control every now and then. Gear has improved so much over the past few years that the old reasons for going tele (reliability, weight) have all but disappeared.

If you're interested in learning something new, go for the telemark setup. Probably cheaper to get into with the number of people that are migrating over to AT.

Tele skiers prefer tele for its aesthetic, flowing turns. Done well, tele is fun and very graceful. Tele is also an interesting new skill to learn for burned out alpine skiers. Tele also has a somewhat cultish sub-culture, which can be pretty fun to be a part of.

AT is a more efficient way of moving around in the mountains/backcountry; it is more mechanically efficient on the ascents since you aren't fighting the flexure of the boot/binding and it is more powerful for control on descents. It does not require learning a new turn, so the learning curve will be easier.

If you want a backcountry setup that you (assuming that you retain some residual ability at alpine skiing) can immediately take into the backcountry and use (somewhat) effectively, then go AT because of the shorter learning curve- on descents is skis like an alpine ski.

If you want the experience of learning a difficult (but fun) new skill, then go telemark. It will definately take some time riding lifts to become proficient enough on tele skis to use them effectively in the backcountry.

Remember; you have to learn your turns before you can earn your turns. If you want to go directly to earning turns, and to have the best and most efficient BC setup, go AT. If you are psyched about learning some new turns, go tele.

Or, if you don't want to have to make this decision, move to SoCal and climb warm rock year round (I don't ski anymore...)

Tele is super hard, I've spent a couple half days falling down on the bunny hill before getting fed up and grabbing my board.

that said if I was going to seriously take up skiing (I want to but just dropped a shit ton of cash on ice climbing gear, priorities...) I'd go tele, my dad is really good and smokes me in the backcountry. The free heel turn is seriously cool and if you perfect it you can look like a total badass. go for broke

I have meet some fantastic telemark skiers, but very few of them could ever keep up with really good alpine skiers at the resorts, and always struggled more with snow conditions in the backcountry. I say this from growing up watching people move from leathers and three pins and old shitty silvrettas all the way to the newest gear, it's never changed. Also, if you have any sort of knee issues whatsoever, later on in life (not calling you old) may not be the best time to take up a sport that puts untold amounts of stress on that joint. Just my opinions. I have skied on nothing but AT gear since its modern genesis of the first year Garmont G-Ride boots and Fritschi Freeride bindings, so maybe I'm biased, but go with what you already have muscle memory for and save your ACLs.

Jonathan Callahan wrote:I do both. Love the feeling of the tele turn. It's an incredibly poetic feeling that creates more of a dance with the terrain. Alright, enough touchy feely talk. It's nice to lock the heel down and have a bit more control every now and then. Gear has improved so much over the past few years that the old reasons for going tele (reliability, weight) have all but disappeared. If you're interested in learning something new, go for the telemark setup. Probably cheaper to get into with the number of people that are migrating over to AT.

These are my exact thoughts as well. I love skiing tele and have skied everything on teles for a very long time and will continue to ski a majority of my in resort skiing on teles but last fall skiing breakable crust with a 60lb pack on in the cascades I had to question whether it was wort it. I recently bought a dynafit setup and love it for long extensive tours but will always choose tele for in bounds as well as some small day tours on the side.

You should take your best turns in to the back country.
All of the Canadian guide I have skied with are on randonee most on the dynafit system. Ihave used the tristep in and out of bounds with zero problems. The new versions are much better.

You don't have to be fighting the tele binding if you are touring.... They make free pivot bindings with zero resistance just like any AT binding. Even Hammerheads are ok to tour with if you put them on their softest setting (which can be done in about 5 seconds).

I think if you haven't been on skis since straight skis, you are going to be learning something new even if you jump onto an AT setup. Try telemark if it intrigues you. You can find a pretty cheap setup used, granted it may not have the free pivot bindings for touring.

That being said, I like telemark for everything. I won't say it is better for anything really, I just find it more fun. And the one time I tried alpine skiing, I could only turn to the right and fell down a lot.....

Just as a side-note I have a full tele setup for sale for now, $250 takes it:
BD Crossbow skis
BD O3 Bindings
Garmont Synergy Boots
BD Glidelite Skins

Tele is super fun and if you can get out enough it can usually be perfected in a season, just takes practice.
-Nick

Evan S wrote:Also, if you have any sort of knee issues whatsoever, later on in life (not calling you old) may not be the best time to take up a sport that puts untold amounts of stress on that joint.

Actually, telemarking puts little stress on the knee compared to parallel turns. In the tele turn, the knee bends up and down, in line with the plane of your leg. In a parallel turn, the knee receives lateral strain, in opposition to the plane of the leg. Knee ligaments don't like sideways strain. Also, incorrect DIN settings and/or failed release puts huge force on the knees. How many telemarkers do you know that have hurt their knees?

That said, it's much harder on your ass. And, as other have pointed out, rando beats tele for efficiency and weight. Also, rando gear is improving rapidly, while tele-gear development is stagnant. Rando boots cross over to mountaineering much better.

I still telemark everywhere, despite the lack of any performance advantage. If you can do it, it's so fun and rewarding. It's like climbing with passive pro only, leaving the cams at home. Yeah, it makes things a little slower and spicier, but it's not prohibitive and takes a little bit of art to accomplish.

Fix the heel, fix the skier.

Nick Mardirosian wrote: is there any advantage to telemark though? Im not opposed to learning something new.

The advantage to telemark is that the turns are more fun. You float and bounce through the powder in a different way. You can get down into it and kinda surf it. The other advantage is you will put in 3x's the amount of work you did on a snowboard which means you can drink 3x's more beer at the end of the day!

I agree about the knee not being stressed in telemark. Watch a good tele skier ski bumps at Mary Jane, then watch a good alpine skier. On tele you float around and over the bumps, using them to your advantage. Alpine forces the skier to smash into the uphill face from bump to bump in order to mitigate speed.

Nick Votto wrote:Just as a side-note I have a full tele setup for sale for now, $250 takes it: BD Crossbow skis BD O3 Bindings Garmont Synergy Boots BD Glidelite Skins Tele is super fun and if you can get out enough it can usually be perfected in a season, just takes practice. -Nick

Size on the boots?

I'm a pinhead, through and through. I actually got my start on cross-country skis with a 3-pin binding, upgraded to a NNN BC setup, then got my tele setup. I love it, way more than it loves me, but it is not without its flaws.

For one thing, you can not perform more than 10 consecutive tele turns without a reggae band comprised entirely of white, middle class Americans who couldn't find Jamaica on a map of Jamaica bursting spontaneously into existence. If you can't have that on your conscience, don't tele.

Second, while you look badass linking sweet dropped-knee turn into sweet dropped-knee turn, you are going slower, carving wider turns, and you have to ski a lot before you can consistently get to the third turn. While alpine skiing is about bending the snow and ski to your will, telemark skiing is about negotiating with those elements to get the desired effect. You'll notice that while the basic pattern of lean-carve-repeat is the same in all downhill snowsports, telemark skiing is the only one that doesn't actually refer to it as carving if they don't absolutely have to. You get phrases like "edge engagement" and "weight transfer" but never "carve", which is the whole point of dropping your knee on the inside foot: leaning over so you carve.

Third, tele skiing sucks on hard pack. Whereas alpine skiers need to be better to ski well in powder, powder is basically the only situation where tele skiing is easier than alpine skiing. To be sure, we all live for powder days, so if you consistently feel like a hero on the best days, it isn't necessarily a problem.

I can't stress enough how much I hate tele-subculture. Mostly because that subculture is the hipsters of snowsports (snowmobilers are the rednecks of snowsports, but you already knew that), and I hate hipsters. The hippy, free-love, soul-skier thing has infected an otherwise innocuous hobby. Its enough to know that being an awesome tele-skier takes more work than being an awesome alpine skier, we don't have to demean them spiritually in the process.

Telemark might not 'stress' the knee laterally as much as Alpine but your knees will do WAY more work over the course of the day leading to increases in platellar tendonitus (sp?) as well as wearing out your the cartilage in your knees faster. So while the ACL/MCL issues might be less you are FAR more prone to wearing out your knees with tele.

My buddy is an older dude... pretty old school. Sounds like he is trying to sandbag me lol. I'll have to demo both but I'm leaning more towards AT now.

I learned tele turns on skinny xc skis, and love the turn for what it rewards you with. However, I started AT skiing last spring and the new gear took me places I normally wouldn't have gone with my tele skis.

One thing that I discovered on AT skis last spring: try skiing down with your boots in the unlocked/climbing mode. It kind of gives elements of the tele turn to parallel turns. I tried that only a couple of times so will experiment more this winter.