Have been interested in learning to Telemark for a while now. Has anybody taken classes in any of the areas closer to Zurich?? Maybe places that rent Telemark skis?

Haven't trained with them, but the SSSF at Flumserberg certainly
offer an intro to telemark skiing with equipment hire.
.

Can not help but "Feel the heal and free the soul"

Well, for what it's worth, I don't know where to rent equipment but I have my own. If you want, I could give you an intro to teleskiing. I've shown a few people, but I'm sure there are way better skiers than me. However, the price is right (free). I'm in Lausanne but often around Zurich. PM me if you make some plans.

Telemarking can be a lot of fun .... but don't underestimate the learning curve....... you will be back to basics for at least a year and you will discover muscle groups that you normally only see in medical text books. But it is alot of fun.

As a cautionary tale, some years I got cocky and decided that I was bored alpine skiing and, since I was living in Oslo, decided to learn to tele. Bought the t-shirt got the mug, freed my heel etc etc and after a couple of seasons skiing on tele skis a lot was good enough to do all of my back-country skiing on teles. The learning curve included sticking my own ski, still attached to my boot, into my scalp, flailing around on all number of blue runs and discovering that you can still ski alpine with tele gear if you have beefy enough boots

Then I was touring in the Alps and had a horrible time skiing down a glacier and that night, after my legs had stopped hurting and my ego had recovered went out and brought a pair of AT boots. Since then if I am doing any serious skiing I have more fun on alpine / AT skis and my tele skis will only come out if the snow is good and I will only be out for a couple of hours. Check out telemarktips.com and watch any of the unparelled films for inspiration.

Hugh

Cereus, thanks for the kind offer. I'll definitely send you a PM when I decide to get out there.
I'll try to avoid impaling myself on my own ski. Thanks for the link.

I am a qualified telemark ski instructor but am also based near Geneva.

The swiss tele honeypot areas are Engleberg and Davos. Here there are specialist shops and it's easier to get decent instruction. The guys in Davos (Full Moon) are american origin so speak excellent english and have good ski's to demo. Many of the swiss schools do offer instruction but it's highly variable in quality and depends on where the instructor did their learning. Flims went through a phase of offering telemark lessons including hire but not sure if they still do.

Here's the link to the swiss telemarking club http://www.telemark.ch/us/?id=1&L=1
They offer schnupper days (try it out days)

and the company i learnt to ski with http://www.telemarkskico.com/ who are very good.

Plus the best telefest is in Livigno it's always near easter time and is a fantastic week of tele-ing. http://www.skieda.com

We also have a pair of Atomic R9 skis 170cm with standard G3 binding for sale for around 200sfr

Hi Kate,

We're going to Murren in March and were thinking of trying a couple of days of telemarking - do you have any ideas of any instructors based there who you could recommend to give some lessons?

Thanks!

Sadly i can't, not that well connected into the movement since taking up randonee racing where tele ski's are not allowed.

but here are some clues as to what to focus on (beside split squat jumps to build your quads up);
the key to tele-ing is amazingly simple (in principle, just tricky to practice). It's all about getting lots of back foot pressure. So to initiate the turn the movement is to press a foot firmly down on the ski and slide it back still pressing really hard throughout. Then do it with the other side. A good tele skier is always moving up or down and never lets of the pressure. One of the most useful drills is to practice this on fairly flat terrain without turning, traversing the slope, pulling the feet pas each other. If you are applying continuous pressure the ski's will stay nice and stable, if they skitter about alot then chances are you are a bit on & off with your pressure. A common error. Once you get the feel for this on the flat you can take it to steeper terrain and build in the turn.

Edging seems to be less of an issue and comes more naturally, especially to people that can already ski.

happy skiing, afterall free the heel and ankle deep powder just gets deeper.

OK, thanks! It's useful to have a think about how it works before actually getting out there on the slopes

Happy skiing to you too!

Hi Have been skiing Telemark since 2002 I believe (I am not quite sure
It's basically the same as "normal" skiing, always keep the pressure on the foot pointing downwards and let the other ski float backwards.

When you feel that you in control and loose the feeling of awkwardness having one ski behind, you will discover that you much more free doing telemarking then carving.

In my opinion one should practice with some speed (reasonable) since it will make the momentum in turning much easier. You don't have to go all the way down in the beginning (it's okay to cheat a little) since that will come naturally once you get the feeling doing the turns and being comfortable with having boots with a heel not attached to the ski's .
Use your poles in order to create balance but also to determine your next pivot point.

I will be in Zurich in mid February, if anyone is up will gladly go skiing.

Cheers

C

Just a quick update on this - I spent the last week in Murren in the Bernese Oberland, and spent 3 days doing Telemark.

We had a couple of lessons from one of the instructors at the Murren Ski School called Jens, who was excellent, and spoke fluent English, Italian, German, Dutch... You can also hire telemark skis and boots from the Salomon centre which is just by the Schilthornbahn gondola station.