Snow Skills

Good balance in telemark turns can come as much from what you keep out of your stance as from what you put into it. It’s tough to maintain balance from a split stance regardless; adding in an unnecessary rotation of the body will only make it more challenging. It’s key to keep the upper body quiet in telly turns and the location and motion of your hands can have an important role toward that effort.

For the purposes of this post, assume that the hands include the arm from the wrist all the way back to your shoulder. The best location for your hands is at your sides and over the snow. If you draw your hands across your body or over your gear, your shoulders will have twisted and are probably encouraging your torso to twist. That’s a motion any skier or rider wants to avoid if possible, as you’re giving away balance. If your hands are at your sides and over the snow, they’re probably in a good position to help fine tune your balance, not reduce it.

For the pole swing, the best motion for the hands is to sweep along the sides of your body. Visually, your pole grips should never come over the skis. Even though your body is rising at the transition, try to focus on lifting your hands only as much as you need to to swing the pole (or poles, if you use a two-hand swing). Mentally, think forward and aft as the path for your hands. Your hands will tend to stay proportional to your torso and avoid any motion that would interfere with keeping your center of mass low.

Use good hand motions, avoid bad ones, and from out of the resulting good balance will flow the good kharma of free heeling.