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.