I just read a great article in the Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine on Telemark Skiing in the Southeast. It seems to very accurately describe the art of learning to telemark! I also stumbled across this article in BRO about good places to find powder stashes in the SE, on telemark skis of course

After my trip last weekend fighting the crowds at Snowshoe, I'm definitely feeling more pull towards the solitude (and beauty) that skiing at White Grass offers, even if you have to earn your turns...


hmm.... this:


or.... this:

I like both types of skiing -- no reason to limit yourself to just one. If you have the freedom to choose where and when, and don't have to always depend on lifts, it opens up a lot of flexibility.

When I hear people complain about crowds at SS, I like to tell them about the many great weekday powder days I have had there with no crowds at all. You just have to choose your ski days a bit more carefully. Weekends crowds can be brutal.

Unfortunately I have to deal with the four letter - W O R K - so weekend days is all I have! Someday I hope to have the flexibility to pick whatever day I want to do my recreational activities, but at this point its Saturday or Sunday.

My long-term goal, if I ever succeed in moving to the mountains (I got two-thirds the way to the Rockies on my last move), is to ski frequently enough to take up telemarking. I love the wilderness for hiking and camping, the solitude and the emptiness, and I love skiing, so it seems reasonable that these two loves need to be married. I just don't ski frequently enough right now to do it. But I would be enraptured by being able to skin up at sunrise and ski vast, untracked bowls. It would be the achievement of a lifetime.

Someday...