January 25th 4th Telemark Lesson

Well this is my forth week of tele-skiing and almost three weeks since I put on my alpine skis. I picked up my new skis on Friday, and decided to just dig in and buy some skins for them. While I was waiting for the ski technician to cut and customize my skins for me, he called me back to talk. It turns out that his mother's, mother was a Brockway and he wanted to see if we were somehow distant cousins. Interesting... Anyway, along with my purchase of a backpack (with my latest 35% discount over clearance at Sierra Trading Post) I could possibly venture out into the back country. Now there's a scary thought :)

As Kim was out of town, I figured Saturday was a great day to just practice my tele turns, without any pressure to perform or get down the mountain quickly. It was a pretty yucky day so the mountain was quiet. At the top of the first run, while I was messing with my skis (because I had put them on backwards, due to the fact that I didn't realize the leashes didn't come along with the bindings and didn't notice that when I picked them up the night before, so I had no reference to follow), Marino Gonzales came skiing up on his tele-skis, he had just taken a lesson. So we decided to practice together. We stuck with it all day, with the exception of a lunch break. We both agreed this was harder than we originally expected it would be.

Sunday was my 4th lesson. Donna was back and so we headed up to Taos, this time her friend Liz joined us. Donna had bought a pair of last years K2 Dawn Patrol's from the same woman I bought my boots from, on Saturday she had bindings mounted on them and today she had decided to buy some boots. Liz is an alpine skier and was also looking for some boots. So we spent a little time at the Boot Doctor being fitted for boots. The guy told Liz that the boots she had were the worst boots Nordica had EVER made, but it still didn't convince her to buy some, YET!!! Donna however took the plunge and bought the 2009 Garmont Venus boots. I gave her some poles I had and she was set.

We skied for the rest of the morning and then Donna and I took off to our lessons. Bob was again my instructor this week. Only myself and Katherine (another person from Los Alamos) were there this week. At the last minute we were joined by Patrick, a Chiropractor from Santa Fe. Patrick was a complete trip, I am pretty sure he will die by tele-skiing. He took these amazing falls that almost seemed choreographed. By the end of the day Bob had to take him back to the lodge because he had hurt himself and so our lesson ended early. The emphasis for the day was making a smooth transition from one leg to another. Bob's claim is that the transition is what separates adequate tele-skier from the good tele-skiers. Of course I want to be good, not just adequate :-) We did a lot of exercises on this, ensuring that it is a fluid movement, moving both legs at the same time. What I like about Bob is that he is very technical in how he approaches things and you can see the mechanics in how this whole thing works. Katherine and I weren't ready to end the day when Bob took Patrick down the mountain so we headed back up and took more runs. I must be doing it better because my legs are feeling it more. I suppose this is a good and bad thing. Next week will be my last lesson as I have to go to Houston on the 8th, but I don't see that being the end to this journey. Stay tuned to see how it all turns out.

January 18th 3rd Telemark Lesson

It was a big weekend in my tele ski journey. Michael decided to come up and check out what I was learning in my lessons at Taos, so I rented some gear down at Sangre de Cristo Mountain Works for the weekend. This also gave me the opportunity to try out some different skis.

I had fully expected to ditch the tele skis after lunch, but my turns were starting to improve a little so I stuck with it all day. Michael and Gary were very patient with me while we skied some easier slopes, but by the end of the day I was able to get around some smaller moguls. It was a bright sunny day, we had beer in the camelback and Santa Fe Brewing was pouring on the deck. It was a fun day.

Sunday was my 3rd lesson in Taos. Donna was in Florida this weekend, so Michael kept me company on the way up. We skied for about 2 hours or so before my lessons. I then took off and Michael met up with Angela and Christa for lunch at the Bavarian. My instructor this week was Bob. I like Bob a lot, he is very technical in his explanations and that was helpful in understanding what we were suppose to do and how it impacted the turns, etc. Again the concentration was on weighting the back ski, which I think I felt a little bit of pressure this time. At least a glimmer of hope. We also concentrated on keeping our bodies downhill and pole positioning. His final words to me were weight the up hill ski more and keep working on that.

I ended the day at the Bavarian and then the St. Bernard for some apps and beers. It was another beautiful day on the mountain.

Day 3 was Martin Luther King Day, another beautiful day at Pajarito Mountain. I met Kim and Gary (it was his birthday) up at the mountain and then Michael joined us for the afternon. I decided to wear the tele skis so that I could practice what I learned on Sunday. Again I expected to switch to my alpine skis in the afternoon and again I didn't do it. I really want to get past this beginner phase and feel comfortable skiing at a regular pace on at least the blues and small moguls. I think I'm really close. My right hand turn is feeling pretty good and in some kind of control. The left however is totally lacking. As I always tell Tiff, practice, practice, practice.

I took another big step this weekend. I was hooked up with Diane, a patroller at Pajarito, she had a pair of Garmont Venus Tele Boots that had never been used in my size. They are a 2006 version of the boot, but I think will work just fine. I bought them and used them on Sunday and Monday. In addition, I skied on the G3 Nectar ski all weekend and decided to take the plunge and buy them. So Monday night I went back to Sangre, turned in my rental gear and bought a pair as well as some G3 Targa Elle bindings. They will be ready for me on Friday. No more renting for me. So I suppose this makes me a little committed. What have I done :-)

January 11th 2nd Telemark Lesson

Donna, Kim Meyer and I got up to Taos around 9am. Donna and I got our rental gear and the three of us headed up the mountain. We spent the morning practicing what each of us had learned so far. Kim was able to give us a few tips as she has been at this longer. Kim and I headed down some more challenging terrain from what Donna and I had done the week before and it was pretty good. We even tried out some moguls. After lunch and a little time in the sun (see those ski bunnies to the left) we headed out for our lesson. It was a beautiful day, I moved to another group this week which was a little more closely matched to me. Dave was my instructor for the day. He was really great. He had us do a bunch of exercises on balance, edging, smearing, side slipping, and transition into turns. He gave us each a lot of great feedback. The group was fun and we spent from about 1-4pm skiing with Dave. The last run of the day we tried a little new terrain which included some moguls as well. I was able to get through it all, it wasn't that pretty but it's starting to come together more. I'm still struggling with weight balance, and getting my lunge down and apart, it seems to come and go througout the day. I find that my knee is a little sore at the end of the day once my legs are tired out, but so far not too bad. Overall it was a great day. What will next week bring...

January 4th 1st Telemark Lesson

We arrived in Taos on a very snowy day. We spent most of the morning getting our bearings, signing up for the lessons, buying a Taos Card, finding rental gear. After a little lunch for energy we set out to the beginners hill. The first challenge of course was figuring out how to get the suckers on in the first place. The bindings are not at all like alpine (and for Donna who is a snowboarder this was even more foreign). It took a while but we finally got our skis on and were ready to roll. I had heard many times, if you run into trouble you can fall back on the alpine, so I decided first that I just needed to get comfortable that this would be true. So we took a couple of runs just for that reason before the class was to start.

The time finally came to meet our class. There were about 30 or so people who had signed up for this class, but there were about 8-10 instructors so they had us do a ski-off to place us in groups. Donna and I landed in the bottom groups since we had NEVER been on tele-skis before. We were joined by a Taos local Heather.

Our instructor Stephanie started us out very slowly, she emphasized making parallel turns and ensuring that we weren't resorting to snow plow or stem turns. We practiced the lunge's in the straights and made parallel turns. I clearly had a stronger side, one side was feeling good and the other was a disaster. I have not felt so incompetent on skis in a long time so it was certainly a little frustrating. I think overall I did pretty well. Stephanie is going to let me try to ski with the next group up next week, we'll see how it goes.

Welcome

Welcome to this blog. I created this so that my friends could follow my journey from alpine skier to tele-skier. Although I have no intent on giving up my first love (alpine) I decided to expand my views of skiing and try this up and coming snow sport.

A little background: The first real exposure I had to tele-skiing was watching Josh Smith back in the late 1990's. What I remember most is that he liked to take jumps and about 85% of the time would fall forward and do these really great face plants. Although I loved to laugh at him ( I mean with him), at no time did I see this in my future.

Several other friends have fallen victim to this sport since and with three knee surgeries to my name all I could think was "there is no way I would do that".

So why now? Who knows, I caved under pressure, I need a mental distraction (which by the way has led to finishing college, kayaking trips with orca's, sprint triathalons, just to mention a few), or to get Michael off my back ;-)

For those of you who know me well, you already know i'm a little competitive so if i'm going to try something I have no desire to spend much of my time totally sucking at it. So if I was going to do this I needed to do it right.

Donna Smith decided to go on this journey with me, so we signed up for a 6 week course (every Sunday) at Taos for ~ 2:30 - 3 hours each session. For those who are not familiar with Taos, they have the best ski school in the country (or so they claim).

With the cost of lessons, lift tickets, and rental gear I figure this is about a $800 investment, so I feel confident I will come out of the next six weeks with either a desire to do this or not. Wish me luck.