What Happens When You Take Skiing Too Seriously?
Don't let its placid tediousness fool you. The office kitchenette can be a hornet's nest. From cutting gossip and quick flirtations to non-acknowledgment between work rivals–not to mention the acrid scent of microwaved tuna fish and drawers full of sharp objects–the otherwise humdrum fridge-and-counter of the nine-to-five teeters on the edge with each passing moment.
And one wet, snowy afternoon several winters past, as I threw away the detritus of my take-out lunch, I came face-to-face with a coworker; toe-to-toe on the hallowed, linoleum-lined halls we both then inhabited some 40 hours a week.
It had the feeling of a muted duel–like most of our interactions seemed to anymore. Ever the one to offer an olive branch in the moment, only to feel meek later, I looked for something to say to ease the tension. Though this colleague and I had had it out over things big and small of late, he and I still had something in common. We both engaged in perhaps the most haughty of snowsports, the technique oft derided for its arrogant practitioners. We were both telemark skiers.
Somewhat self-effacingly, I mentioned that I had skied the day before in the apostate alpine manner, and that, believe it or not, it was fun.
Sensing an opportunity for the upper hand, my coworker struck with joking disdain–the kind where the kernel of truth feels big enough to crack your tooth with a single bite. I retorted that he, my equal at work though inferior in terms of telemark technique, was also known to lock the heel from time to time, thank you very much.
"But I don't go around telling everyone ‘I'm the tele guy,'" he sneered.
By ‘tele guy' he meant that I write a column on telemark skiing–a second job I had picked up by dumb luck years prior that was something my fellow free-heeler seemed to at first find tepidly cool. But deep down I always felt he bristled at my loyalty being split between writing and the day job. In his mind, I presumed, I should have undying adherence to what he thought I should.
Telemark skiing itself has been framed by a sort of dogmatic approach; one so pronounced that The Turn long was stainedby the accusation that its adherents were perhaps a bit, how would you say? Annoying. And that perception (I would call it a stereotype) was best illustrated by a trusty retort that often spouted from the lips of many in the previous generation when confronted with all things telemark: no one cares.
Though that trope has mostly fallen out of use, telemark skiing and its skiers for years suffered from a lowly reputation–yes, for their supposed love of jambands and ganja, but more so because they too easily slipped into moralizing about the soulfulness of a certain lunging turn. It seemed in the eyes of the tele skier, skiing had become a debate over which technique was ascendent; a tired comparison on the correct way to do something meaningful but still delightfully trivial. So the free-heeler and their form were subject to a pointed backsplash. Thus anti-telemark refrains long oozed through the skiing hivemind, ever reminding the tele skier to take it down a notch.
Though telemark fell out of favor in part because equipment innovation pushed backcountry enthusiasts to other, fixed-heel options, perhaps just as operatively, The Turn seemed to nearly die because those on the outside looking in found its doctrinaire form in need of a comeuppance. That perspective was so acute, so long-lived, that the current telemark generation has gone to great lengths–from disparaging The Dead to claiming gasp! that making alpine turns on tele gear is a-okay–to distance themselves from their dogmatic forebearers.
Of course, the current newschool, like any newschool, itself leans into its own doctrine and mandate as it identifies itself as the antithesis of its foil, the dreaded old guard.
Regardless of what side of the aisle anyone might find themselves on, this double-edged sword is indeed a sharp and focusedblade, yet perhaps a narrow-minded one. And the chief pitfall of an overly dogmatic approach is in its isolating nature. Those who profess to know the way may–like the elder telemark subculture seemed to–find themselves marooned by their one-dimensional devotion, just as they may be further isolated by those who tire easily of their overbearing ideals.
Though he wouldn't say it, I perceived a certain ire from my coworker. Using my own–even his–identity as a telemark skier, he twisted the knife when the chance arose, using my apparently loud devotion to all things telemark as a device to tease.
I felt the bitter taste of defensiveness rise, but had I indeed been too doctrinaire? Had I, myself, stumbled into the trap of inflexibility? My ceaseless ramblings about a niche way to take to the outdoors always seemed simply esoteric. Was being known in some way as the "tele guy" more operative than I realized?
I thought then of a former mentor, one who now won't respond to my entreaties, likely because one of my writing gigs is for a publication he vehemently despises. Years earlier, I had been drafting an article, and as a self-professed former Kool-Aid swilling free-heeler who had ‘seen the light' and given up the turn in favor of trusty and soon more socially acceptable alpine touring gear, I thought the old mentor might have an interesting perspective for it. Ironically, the piece was about how sober-minded critiques of telemark from outside its conclave had in fact stirred the insulated sport and helped it evolve and broaden.
Though my former mentor had in private aired numerous opinions on various topics, he not only declined to comment on something he previously had a pointed judgment toward, he flipped the script on me, saying that being overly dogmatic toward anything was a recipe for isolation. He wasn't wrong, but it was painfully ironic that it came from a person who wouldn't connect with me anymore because of the publication I had a freelance relationship with, one that his personal doctrine cast off as beyond the pale.
It was all a mirror. In those moments, I felt defensive, but was met with my own reflection and wondered where my personal doctrine had clouded my own judgment, how my dogma may have isolated me. Had I erred in the way I approached documenting the ski movement? Was I blind to my own narrow-mindedness?
As humans–and perhaps especially snowsports enthusiasts–it becomes easy to identify yourself by what you are, but stronger still may be the penchant for us to identify those outside our sphere with a broad brush. A snowmobiler is all too often lazy to the strictly human-powered skier, just as a skate skier becomes a lycra-nerd. And the telemark skier is ever the arrogant hippie. Stereotypes all, many even jokes, but us skiers often see the cohorts we don't identify with through this heuristic. A mental shortcut to make sense of a complicated snowsports world.
Perhaps, then, it's not just that being overly dogmatic isolates the doctrinaire; they are perhaps just as isolated from without, succumbing to not only their own perspective but those around them.
Edward Abbey, maybe the modern outdoor movement's most misunderstood figure, one whose ideals have been subsumed into a subculture he likely would have abhorred, but whose approach is in many ways the bedrock of the modern outdoor ethos, can again inject the conversation with ballast.
While Cactus Ed appeared every bit the tireless, even revolutionary crusader for all things outside, he had a bit of advice for those inclined toward obsession.
"Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am–a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic," he wrote. "Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it."
I may be the tele guy after all, just as my former coworker can appear inflexible, or my one-time mentor perhaps the overly moralistic outdoor writer. But is that so much their own personal dogma at play, or mine? Is the outdoor figure we loathe actually worthy of disdain, or is it our own projection that is?
In all, it's not just that we should expect ourselves to be the half-hearted enthusiast, but grant that grace to those around us as well. Otherwise, we face the isolation that comes naturally with being the overly dogmatic skier.
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This story was originally published May 19, 2026 at 9:21 AM.