Tt.com: Hey Paul, welcome to Telemarktips. The
3rd edition of "Freeheel Skiing" came in our mail last
week and it's already getting a little dog-eared from being passed
around so much. I really enjoyed the sections on where the sport
is at and what telemark is all about. Even with all the changes
in gear and new branches of the sport beginning to form, it seemed
like you were saying that the core values of telemark --freedom
and the rejection of restrictive dogma-- remain
unchanged. Do you believe that to be the case?
PP: Thanks
for the welcome, Mitch.
In answer to your question, I
think that the freedom issue SHOULD be the case. I also think
that it's human nature to measure ourselves against others, and
make rules. It's ironic, since tele is an individual sport, born
from individual sports like mountaineering. I really believe
that the snow and terrain should determine technique, not some
rule or restrictive dogma, as you say. I write about free-heel
skiing in that light because I believe it to be true.
Tt.com: In
reference to all the new stuff like big boots, fat skis and performance
bindings you wrote: "Technology is good. Technology rules..",
and yet there are some folks out there who believe that with
all this new gear we are actually losing part of the soul of
the sport. What do you say to those people?
PP: Simple—you
don't have to ski on the new stuff. You should be free to choose.
Do the kind of skiing that satisfies you.
Tt.com: The second edition of your book was
published back in 1995. A lot has changed in the sport of telemark
since that time, especially the gear. Is that the part of your
new edition with the most changes?
PP: I
did change a lot in the gear section. Skis have changed significantly,
with big sidecuts, wide waists, and much shorter lengths. And
with this evolution there are new issues to address like skin
width, risers, and boot compatibility. And boots—when writing
the 1995 edition, plastic boots were still pretty new, and there
were a lot of leather hold-outs. I had to ride the fence a bit.
Today, you hardly ever see leather boots, so I was able to focus
on plastic.
Tt.com: The
emergence of shaped skis is certainly one of the bigger changes
in gear. We all know that the new skis with a lot of sidecut
make carving with less skid easier. Do you think there a downside
to all this shapeliness?
PP: I’ll
quote myself from my book: “Shape….Its minuses: too-shaped
(sidecut) skis can be “hooky”, nervous, with too much
edge hold—especially when trying to exit a turn and start
another. On steeps they may have an unsettling tendency to keep
turning uphill and spin you around. Many off-piste, mogul, and
extreme skiers prefer modern shapes with a little less sidecut
because of these disadvantages in gnarlier terrain.”
Wider-waisted skis tend to help
neutralize those disadvantages. You can see how, in the recent
evolution of “shaped” skis, and what companies are
now offering, that today's ski’s shapes depend more on their
use, i.e. racing and piste skis tend to use more on big carvy
sidecuts with narrower waists, free-ride-type skis still have
less extreme sidecut combined with the waist width and flex for
all-mountain skiing.
Tt.com: As you mention in the new edition, bindings
are changing rapidly. What do you think about the newest crop
of bindings such as Rainey's HammerHead, the step-in Linken and
Voile's VP-II?
PP: I
think that some of the new bindings are an improvement, but they
all are still in the dark ages. For at least these two reasons:
1) As long as the toe of the
boot has a 75-mm duckbill, the boots work fine for skiing, but
are quite limiting for the broader needs when touring and ski
mountaineering: hiking, climbing, crampons. We need a new norm.
2) And I believe very strongly
that a well-designed ski binding should “disappear”.
You should forget it’s there. It should not interfere with
the performance of the ski or boot. Look at alpine—bindings
don’t interfere, they disappear. You set your bindings and
forget them. I think that too many bindings today interfere with
the boot by either changing where it flexes, how it flexes, etc.
Supporting and changing a boot’s performance was an issue
with leather boots because they got so wimpy so fast, but it’s
not necessary with good plastic boots. In fact, I believe it’s
a mistake to change the way a boot was designed to flex—not
to mention that it creates a lot of compatibility questions for
the consumer.
Tt.com: I'm intrigued by the flexible plate
of the new 7tm. Have you skied this binding? and what do you
see as the strengths of its design?
PP: I
skied some of the earliest protos of the 7tm last winter, and
found it to be a very nice-skiing binding because of what I said
above—it doesn’t interfere with the boot or the ski.
Tt.com: I have been thinking a lot about this
since you and I talked about bindings and boots last spring.
I'm thinking a more active binding, particularly one that can
be adjusted for what we have been calling (for lack of a better
term) maximum "forefoot retention", but then adjusted
for a free pivot for touring or climbing, might result in a more
versatile setup. I mean, in telemark we are asking our kit to
do so much more than in alpine; we often need a single pair of
boots and skis to be efficient on the tour out to the goods,
perform well on the skin up and then be powerful, secure and
stable on the ski down. Don't we need new bindings to actually
add to the versatility of our skis and boots? Most of us already
feel the need for a quiver of skis. It seems like, with inactive
bindings that virtually disappear, we are headed for a time where
we also will need a quiver of boots too. I have a vision of a
versatile setup with a medium weight tele boot paired with an
active, adjustable binding that could help the boot perform like
a big boot on the way down, a light boot on the tour and lastly,
on the skin up it would have a pivot as free as a randonnée
boot/binding combo. Is this realistic?
PP: This
is totally realistic, and I think it will happen. It’s really
a simple mechanical problem, as simple as mounting the binding
to a hinge-able plate that can hinge for touring or be locked
down for skiing downhill as a fixed riser. I feel it to be a
very important feature for touring. And I don’t think this
concept is at odds with my idea of a binding’s “disappearing”:
in touring mode, it’s free-hinging like a randonnée
binding; in downhill mode, it holds the boot securely without
interference.
Tt.com: Let's talk a bit about technique. Plastic
boots certainly changed the way we telemark, now I have heard
it said that the new shaped skis are changing the way we ski
too, specifically that the old "tall, small, tall small"
approach is no longer necessary and that we should be concentrating
more on lateral movement than flexion and extension. Yet I noticed
that, in this regard, the technique section of your book remains
largely unchanged. How have shaped skis changed the way we ski?
Have the new skis changed the way the fundamentals of telemark
turning are taught?
PP: I
don’t think that fundamentals have changed, which is why
I retained them in my book. I do think that their emphasis is
changing, which is reflected in this third edition, something
that I began to evolve in the second.
An example: flexion and extension…or,
rather, extension and flexion. If your legs are extended, and
you flex them very quickly, you un-weight your skis and practically
eliminate pressure on them. But if you flex more slowly, you
can reduce and manage pressure on the skis, but they are not
really “un-weighted”. You manage that pressure to maintain
a carve. It’s the same movement as unweighting, just in
different degrees. Shaped skis allow us to manage this pressure
with more subtlety, but we’re still using extension and
flexion to manage it. We extend to get the ski pressured and
flexed, and to hook up the edge early in the turn, and then we
flex to control that pressure through the turn.
With shaped skis we’re doing
a lot of things that we’ve been trying to do for a long
time—better and more easily. More carve with less effort
and less movement. Better grip on firm snow so that you can ski
a bit more two-footed. That doesn’t mean that we’ve
stopped moving, stopped using this flexing and extending. We’re
not skiing the same as we used to, certainly, but we’re
using the same basic skills in a different mix.
And in teaching, it’s most
important to exaggerate basics to sort of “burn them in”.
So we still flex and extend.
Tt.com: What about shaped skis and freeheel
parallel?
PP: They
work great, no question. One could argue that shape has an even
more positive effect making parallel turns than making teles,
because of the turn’s more compact stance with less exaggerated
movements.
Tt.com: Looking ahead, how do you think the
emergence of fat skis for telemark--and I mean really fat skis
with waist widths over 90mm and tips over 120mm--, an evolution
that to many of us seems inevitable, will affect the way we telemark?
Or do you even see such telemark skis on the horizon?
PP: I
like to use what works—that’s my philosophy. And I
love fatter skis. But I see a limit to skis’ appropriate
width, especially if you’re talking about all-around skis—not
that super-wide pair that you save for deep days.
I see a couple of things: one
is, when skis get really, really fat, telemark becomes awkward
because you have to make room for that big wide tip to move through
your lead change. You have to ski a wider stance to make room
for the lead change. It is awkward. And that big wide sharp tip
tends to carve up your gear like salami. So at a certain point
in ski width, not only is it harder to make the turn because
of stance, the turn we’re trying to use is pretty destructive
on the gear.
Add to that the fact that with
super-wide skis parallels become easier and are very practical.
It has yet to be seen how fat
is too fat, as the point of reference is changing every year.
But I do think that we will arrive at “too fat”, for
the above reasons, at least for an all-around ski. And/or, we’ll
change the way we ski, and make different kinds of turns on our
fatter boards.
Tt.com: What do you think about the recent trend
towards telemark freeskiing competitions? Do you think the comp
scene will ever come to dominate telemark skiing the way racing
has dominated alpine and even cross country? Do you think the
comps are good for the sport? The industry?
PP: I’m
the wrong guy to ask about competitions in general because I
free-heel ski for its freedom, to get away, not to be around
a bunch of people. And I’m not driven by competition. But
I do find it a lot easier to relate to this kind of competition—as
opposed to running gates—because it’s about using what
works. If that were the case in tele racing, racers would all
be making (and are usually trying to make) parallel turns. I
don’t mean that to be a jab at racers—I just can’t
relate to the confinement of the gate thing, and can relate better
to the freeskiing thing. It certainly involves awesome all-mountain
skiing skills, which I admire. I think that these men and women
are pushing and changing the sport.
Tt.com: I covered a couple of comps last year
and I would agree with that last statement, but its sounds like
if you were into this stuff you'd prefer the "telemark"
freeskiing competitions to be "freeheel skiing comps."
PP: I
guess…I like the idea of mixing it up.
Tt.com: I know you ski randonnée in addition
to freeheel. Why do you think that most backcountry skiers in
the U.S. are telemark skiers while in Europe most are skiing
randonee? What accounts for the difference?
PP: Part
of it is dogma, which is changing. Randonnée is a lot
more cool today than it was a few years ago.
Then there is the terrain argument,
which is going away. In the old days we said that it was because
of terrain, that in the U.S. we’re covering bigger distances
on more moderate terrain to get to the downhills, and tele gear
(once was) more practical for covering those distances. It was
a lot lighter and more flexible for touring. That is no longer
the case—in fact if you compare heavy tele gear and randonnée
gear, randonnée gear is lighter, and more flexible for
touring.
I started randonnée skiing
years ago when leather boots were the only option for the tele
skier. It was a no-brainer: I used randonnée because I
didn’t want to be skiing for more than a week in wet spring
conditions in wet and frozen boots. I’d used plastic boots
on mountaineering expeditions and liked the no-hassle warm, dry
feet. For me it was this practical gear issue rather than being
more comfortable skiing on one kind of gear or another.
Today the playing field is more
level with plastic tele boots and big skis. We’re skiing
the same terrain and conditions on our tele gear that we’d
ski on alpine or randonnée gear. Given that, randonnée
boots still have a distinct advantage. A couple of springs ago
I did two different alpine tours in Europe, and took two different
sets of gear. My companions were on randonnée gear. The
first tour I used my tele gear. As long as I was on my skis,
things were normal, I made lots of parallel turns, which I like
in those conditions, and I didn’t think much about the gear.
But when climbing, I usually put my crampons on right away, especially
kicking steps up firm snow or when climbing snow over rock. My
tele boots rubber-ed off of everything with their relatively
soft flex and duck bill, while my buddies usually got by fine
with more compact, stiff randonnée soles, resorting to
crampons only when the snow was really, really firm.
The next week we did a randonnée
tour behind La Grave in the Ecrins National Park, which is known
for its steep, rocky terrain. I wore my randonnée setup,
and was much more comfortable standing at exposed rappel anchors
and climbing rock and steep snow. This kind of stuff, attention-getting
in tele boots, then became a no-brainer--in fact I was then more
comfortable than my buddies because some of them were wearing
alpine boots with slippery soles!
Sorry to be so long-winded, but
that experiment illustrated for me how today, as our skis have
become just as wide and substantial, and our boots are just as
burly (or burlier) then randonnée, randonnée still
has an advantage. Not so much for the skiing—as long as
you’re a skilled free-heeled skier and, in my opinion, equally
skilled at parallel turns. But when off the skis, with a stiff
sole and no duck bill, randonnée boots are a lot more
agile for negotiating mountaineering terrain. And in Europe,
there is a lot of that kind of terrain. Most alpine tours involve
bagging peaks on relatively easy terrain with huge exposure.
Often unroped, you really don’t want your clumsy boots sliding
off of a hold.
So I guess, to answer your question
in a very long-winded way, I’m back to the terrain argument,
but this time it’s for the climbing rather than the skiing.
Terrain is a good reason why randonnée has continued to
dominate in Europe—although tele is growing.
Tt.com:) You have a new section in the book
called "Anything Goes" where you write about a day
skiing with some of your old buddies--the late Allan Bard, John
Dostal and John Tidd. In this piece you tell about getting an
assignment from Powder to write in answer to the question "Is
there a right way to telemark?" and discussing this question
as the day progressed, skiing with your old friends. The article
is several pages long and a great read. By itself it is almost
worth the price of the book. In closing can you share with us
a few of your thoughts on this subject? Is there a right way
to telemark?
PP: I’m
glad that you liked that piece. That day meant a lot to me. With
Allan gone, we can’t do it again. Bardini had a great influence
on many of us, and we miss him. He was the quintessential evangelist
of the “anything goes” philosophy. He was a pure soul—I
learned a lot from him.
So, that question, do I think
there’s a right way to telemark? Not really. I do believe
that some styles are more effective than others, and I try to
encourage skiers to break out of their old habits and try new
things. Standing taller, facing down the hill, pole plant timing—these
are ideas that aren’t meant to move you toward some sort
of absolute rigid final form, but are meant as tips or points
of focus that can help you get more out of your skis.
The bigger question for me: is
there a right way to FREE-HEEL ski? Absolutely not, from my perspective,
which is why I’m always pushing other techniques so enthusiastically.
An example: earlier in this interview, when talking about randonnée
skiing and the appropriateness of tele gear, I referred to a
tele skier’s needing to be “equally skilled at parallel
turns” to thoroughly enjoy randonnée trips. I believe
that teles work great in a wide variety of conditions, but randonnée-type
trips are a good example of a situation where even the most skilled
telemark turners are disadvantaged unless they are equally skilled
at parallel turns. Today, having been through many such situations
with many skiers, I’m convinced. If you want to forget about
your gear and ski EVERYTHING that you’re inclined to try,
then you need a parallel that equals or surpasses your telemark.
I think that the very best skiers
are like the best athletes in any sport: they don’t get
hung up in the dogma of their sport, but they use what works.
They are the innovators, that’s how sports evolve, the bar
gets raised.
That philosophy was my number
one purpose in writing my first edition of Free-Heel Skiing 15
years ago. It’s why I named it Free-Heel Skiing instead
of Telemark Skiing. I wanted to encourage and vindicate the use
of all of the techniques at our disposal—especially alpine
techniques—to be better, more versatile skiers. Because
of a free heel we have more options than an alpine skier. Why
limit them? It felt like as though the tiny sport of free-heel
skiing, born from freedom and rebellion, was confining itself
by limiting its repertoire to genuflected technique. In the earlier
days we made telemarks because we had to, that was all that really
worked with straight, skinny skis. But by the time I wrote my
first edition, we had a choice, and I wanted to illuminate that
choice.
So as far as I’m concerned,
anything goes. I’m a lot more worried about getting out
and going skiing, making the time, finding the good terrain and
snow, and staying upright, than I am about what kind of skis
I’m on or turn that I’m making. Skiing is--for me anyway--all
about that freedom.