“Telemarking? Seriously? Are people really still telemarking?”
“Yes, my friend, unfortunately they still are.”
“Why, Joey, why would anyone perform this hideously archaic form of gay ski ballet?”
“Well, lend me your ear friend and allow me to explain.
You see, it’s actually very simple. This savage breed of homo erectus happens to be a group of obnoxiously atrocious skiers. Having realized this disheartening fact long ago, these poor wretched bastards consciously ‘give’ themselves a handicap (i.e. tele gear) and by doing so daftly shout out to the world “Hey, look at me, I’m special, I’m different, I’m on Teles!! Well, of course I can’t keep up or land anything, I mean, c’mon man, I’m on f@$kin’ Teles over here!!!”
The psychological implications of this deranged state, called tele, are extremely sad and should be quietly tucked away into a cushy, not-too-steep, ski hill asylum somewhere in Vermont that serves vegan organic granola-on-a-stick and has daily support groups for incompetence. Yet, these horrible douchenuggets continue to slam their problems directly into our faces at our local ski resorts every day while flaccidly trying to convince us that telemarking is all about ‘soul’.
“What’s ‘soulful’ about sucking at skiing, Joey?”
“Well, you have a point there good buddy. It turns out that absolutely nothing is ‘soulful‘ about sucking at skiing.
Fortunately, I was able to do some research into the ‘soul‘ of telemark skiing and it turns out to be the exact same sort of ‘soul‘ that 8-track tapes, horse-drawn carriages, and pit outhouses have in common. ‘Soul‘ as it refers to telemarking is, in it’s essence, an out-dated, inadequate, godawful, worthless, defunct, low performance version of it’s new age counterpart.
“But, Joey, what does it all mean?”
“Ok, I can see that I’m confusing some of you. So, here it is, spelled out for you simply:
In place of actually ripping and keeping up with the boys, you can spend an extra thousand bucks on flimsy tele gear and you’ll never have to stomp a landing nor keep up with your buddies again.
In a very sick way, it’s ingenius! Tens of thousands of crappy skiers save face every year by showing up to the lift a minute behind their ski buddies and proudly proclaiming “Dude, I was tele-shreading that slope back there soooooo hard brah, did you see those tuuuurrrrnnnnnsssss!?”
“Wow, it’s worse than I feared. So what can we do to help them, Joey?”
“You’ve got a great heart buddy. But, unfortunately, very few of these savages ever recover from this abominable disease. The only thing we can really do is pray for them. Pray they all start skinning up to that great telemark Valhalla in the sky and never come back to bother us again.”
Want to learn more about the lameness of telemark skiing? Read on:
Here are 3 quotes from the great Andrew McLean, the most hard-core backcountry skier on Earth, on telemark vs. AT in terms of Weight, Safety, and Functionality:
“It is one of the engineering marvels of the world how a tele binding with half the function and parts of an AT binding can weigh over twice as much.”
“AT bindings use a mechanical system of springs and cams to release the skier at a predetermined load. Tele bindings stick with their organic roots by using your ACL as a biological release mechanism. The AT system is reset by stepping back into it, and the tele system is reset by stepping into an emergency room.”
“For years, telemark binding designers have struggled to find a balance between having freedom on the uphill and control on the downhill. The result is a nearly perfect division of performance: the uphill inefficiency is equal to downhill instability.”
