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December
14, 2000 Earning your turns What's better in the backcountry - randonnée or telemark skiing? Here's one vote for each By Miles Blumhardt MilesBlumhardt@coloradoan.com To randonnée or telemark, that is the question. David Eye says randonnée. The 42-year-old's knees told him that after years of 100-plus days of telemarking he better
Brian Gardel says telemark. Growing up in France, he has spent 29 of his 31 years trying everything - alpine skiing, telemark skiing, monosking and snowboarding. The only thing he loves more than telemark skiing is avalanches, not getting in them but trying to stay out of them. Though they disagree on the mode of carving up backcountry powder, they do so in a friendly manner, and agree that the ultimate goal is to get back there and enjoy. Here are their takes on these two alternatives to downhill skiing. Randonée Randonée skiing, or alpine touring, is beginning to catch on more in the United States, but still its numbers pale in comparison to telemark skiing, which has a much longer history in this country. "There still is a tremendous biased against randonnée by telemark skiers who believe their sport to be the holy grail but it's weakening," Eye said, noting telemark purists perceive randonnee gear to make backcountry downhill descents too easy. "I see more people up at Cameron Pass and elsewhere wearing randonnee equipment. But even though it's changing, people might not get the best advice at a ski shop because most will try and push you toward tele gear when you might better be served by randonnee gear." Randonée skis are short, fat and shaped, the boots are soft plastic, giving the skier a mix of support and flexibility. And the bindings allow you to lift your heel to dig in on ascents and to lock in on descents, giving the skier the ability to make turns in the deepest snow and baddest slopes. Eye says randonnée gear is superior to tele gear when climbing due to less resistance. He says randonnée bindings work as efficient as door hinges, allowing you to pivot your feet to dig in and push up the hill while telemark's spring bidings are inherently more restrictive when trying to dig in. Randonnee equipment, once criticized for being too heavy, now is about the same weight as tele gear, Eye says. That coming together is mainly due to the majority of both randonnée and telemark skiers having gravitated to soft plastic boots. Eye says, no doubt, you can push the envelope farther with randonnee gear than with tele gear. As evidence he said the first descent of Mount Everest was last year on randonnée gear and that predominantly the most radical descents around the world have been done on randonnée gear. Locally, he said you have to look no further than Longs Peak, with its harrowing 50-degree slope in parts, or the tight turns of the Nokhu Crags. "It's cool to see them pushing their limits with the new tele gear but the truth is you can go into more extreme conditions and with more confidence with randonnée," Eye said. "You have a much better grip on steep and icy slopes. If you are really interested in doing the high and wild stuff, randonnée gear is it. It allows me to go up on the Nokhu Crags and ski down where telemark skiers can't." Eye said telemark skiing is more demanding physically and more difficult to learn than randonnée due to the use of the telemark turn compared to parallel turning in randonnée. He also admitted it's hard to beat the artistry of a good telemark turn, though all but the telemark purists resist flipping the switch to parallel turns when the quads start barking. "Telemark is more athletic," Eye said. "And with the new equipment you don't have to get as low as you used to and you can switch to alpine skiing turns when you get tired. I'm not hung up on the telemark turn like some tele-skiers are. I've proven I can do it very beautifully.'' So, who's doing the randonnee thing? "It's mostly people who are bored with alpine skiing and who don't want to have to learn a whole new sport,'' Eye said. "I have tremendous fun at ski areas because it's more social than backcountry skiing. But you just don't get that same fulfillment at a resort as in the backcountry and that's why people are moving over.'' And Eye says not even the gnarliest resort Black Diamond can match the thrill of looking over your skis to a 45-degree slope's untracked powder, pushing off for those first turns than playing with gravity's whims. "It's incredibly exhilarating,'' Eye said. "Those first turns you don't know how well your edges are going to hold. It can be frightening because you never want to do a Gore-Tex fall for life.'' Telemark Gardel doesn't see the bias teleskiers have for randonnée junkies that Eye talks about. And he doesn't agree with Eye that randonnee skiers can go where telemarkers fear to tread, though most terrain will be in the 20-degree to 30-degree range. But he does know that telemark equipment is simpler yet gives you a superior workout to randonnée so telemark should be your choice. "There are a lot more moving parts with randonnée and that means there are more things susceptible to breaking and more things can go wrong,'' Gardel said. "Simpler is always better in my book. I always carry spare parts and I know that with randonnee you'd be carrying a lot of spare parts. "Eye is old school. With the new telemark equipment with fat skis, plastic boots and new bindings the difference in what you can ski is minimal. I can ski Nokhu, no problem. You can go as bad as you want.'' Gardel said weight isn't much of an issue because most people in Colorado's mountains aren't doing multi-day trips where weight comes in to play, though he added randonnee gear still is heavier than telemark gear. And if you want that hot tub to really feel good, try telemarking for a day. "In randonnée, you just kind of stand there, well more than just stand there, but you know what I mean,'' Gardel said. "Telemark is a full body workout. It's healthier. And there's nothing wrong with going to parallel turns when you get tired.'' Gardel admitted there is more to learning the telemark turn than any element of randonnée skiing and agreed with Eye that those moving from the piste alpine crowd would have a faster learning curve with randonnée. But he emphasized that that shouldn't prohibit people from taking up telemark. "If you're just starting out, snowboarding is the easiest, but if just starting out and choosing between randonnée and telemark I'd say the learning curve is about the same,'' Gardel said. "There is a lot to telemark but too many people are concerned about how they look. I'm not concerned about how I look, I'm all about having a good day. "And people are into Kodak courage and trying to be Warren Miller right away. I believe it's nice to earn your turns. I chose telemark for the mode of transportation, not for the type of turn.'' And as for the thrill, well, Eye never went this far. "It's like having sex,'' Gardel said. "It's like kayaking where you get a full body sensation. You don't just feel it in your muscles but feel the tingle of snow and the cold air on your face. It's one of the better feelings you'll ever have.'' But better than sex? Go see for yourself.
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