Like I need a new hobby…Telemark?

I’ve been out skiing with Laura and the kids over the last few weeks. Gabriel and Isabella have taken to it pretty well. They are always really excited to go. I remember my Grandfather Keith Wikle and my own father teaching me to ski at Shawnee mountain in the Poconos when I was a kid. I loved every minute of it. The kids never seem to think it gets old. Gabriel has been twice but is already scooting down the slopes on his own. Isabella who is a little smaller is making rapid progress too. When my knees and thighs ache from snowplowing down the slope with her in front of me, I try to remind myself she won’t be six forever. She will soon be on her own like Gabe and I will have to track her down rather than take her down.

But I keep seeing telemark skiiers at the slope and my wild Wikle brain is going hmm, that looks like a challenge.

This quote from Hemingway in the Nick Adams stories does my literary imagination no good at all, and I smell a pair of telemark skis in my future if only to try it.

??”Coming down the mountain in the telemark position, kneeling one leg for-ward and bent, the other trailing: his sticks hanging like some insect’s thin legs, kicking puffs of snow as they touched the surface and finally the whole kneeling, trailing figure coming around in a beautiful right curve, crouching, the legs shot forward and back, the body leaning out against the swing, the sticks accenting the curve like points of light all in a wild cloud of snow.”?? ~Ernest Hemingway~.

Check out this telemark video for what an ideal powder day looks like,