Telemark Drills

» Telemark Technique Tips » Drills - Improve Your Telemark Skiing in the Powder » As Featured in Fall Line Magazine.

Pink Panther for The Powder

If you want one tip for telemarking the powder, the key to unlocking the door to powder paradise, the short cut, the fast route, one thing to crack it all, then this is it....are you ready? By the way, I’m giving this away far too cheaply. Let’s cut to the chase, here we go - Forget the Front Ski!

Hokkaido Here We Come!

There you have it, cancel the ski lessons, you don’t need those fat skis anymore, you’ve got it. Book that trip to Alaska or Hokkaido! Don’t forget your snorkel. Happy days...

Hang-on a minute. I’ve overlooked something. Being telemark skiers, you know there’s no short cut, no quick fix, no solve-it-all in a sentence. That technique Shangri-La doesn’t exist. You’ve done the hard yards, maybe still doing them, it can’t be that simple, surely?

Actually, you’re right in both cases. Those ‘one-liner’ technique tips are great, you know the sort, we’ve all read them in books and memorised them until they become a mantra. They can provide those ‘light-switch’ moments when it all clicks, if you’ve got solid foundation skills.

So What's the Secret?

So ‘Forgetting the Front Ski’ is great, if you’re actually doing something with the back ski! There lies the secret, in the powder, you have to actively and accurately pressure, edge and steer the back ski, the moment you don’t, you’ll head plant.

Want to learn how? This is a drill that will really get you working the back ski, it’s called the Pink Panther. Initially, practise it straight running on a flat slope. Once you’ve mastered that, then you can try doing it in a turn. In a turn you will go around the arc with the outside ski completely off the snow while the inside ski transitions from whole foot to heel up! In other words - you’re completely ‘forgetting the front ski’.

Here’s How...

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There you have it, cancel the ski lessons, you don’t need those fat skis anymore, you’ve got it. Book that trip to Alaska or Hokkaido! Don’t forget your snorkel. Happy days...

More Tele Technique Tips

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