Tele Skier Demoing Alpine Mounts - What to Look For

[Angle Parking]

Telemark skiing is an embarrassment to both skiing, and humanity in general. That is all I have to say.

[Alpinord]

Back in the tele daze, Ball of Foot on Cord Center was the call. For a 'drop the knee' telemarker, with all the weight on the front ski, a normal alpine stiffness made sense. For a 60/40 or 50/50 telemarker, a softer or lighter ski was better due to the weight distribution.

I spent a lot of time para-marking to help with balance and carving before transitioning back to alpines. Definitely a fun challenge in the bumps without super active tele bindings like the NTNs.

To save boot costs in a transition, just do a little duckbill trimming :

[bodywhomper]

In the late 90’s rod johnson worked part time at marmot mtn works. He Swiss-cheesed many skis there and previously when he worked at rotte, comparing how the sweet spot for binding mount compared to the cord center-based mount paradigm. He consistently found that moving ahead of cord center was better all around performance for most skis. It was usually close to the measured boot center at boot center line of the ski. This was at the time when most skis were trad camber and shape profile, and most techs mounted based on cord center.

[frorider]

As others have posted above, assuming modern stiff tele boots and reasonably active bindings, it’s been a decade since we all figured out alpine boot center or maybe -1 cm works damn well and isn’t worth debating further.

As someone who prefers stiff skis like my 197 metal as fuck Katanas or im103s back in the day, I really don’t notice much difference when I swap out NTN Freerides / Evo WCs for alpine binders and 120 boots but obviously most tele skiers prefer a moderate boot like the TX Comp and as mentioned up thread, if your alpine demo feels near the end of the burliness scale you can handle then you may not like them with a moderate tele boot.

[XXX-er]

Telemark skiing is an embarrassment to both skiing, and humanity in general. That is all I have to say.

wasn't that you who said " what racewalking is to running, telemark is to downhill skiing "

[jmedslc]

Telemark skiing is an embarrassment to both skiing, and humanity in general. That is all I have to say.

This is something that someone would say when they’re too weak/unskilled to excel at something.

I bet you can’t parallel park either? Amirite?