Awesome history lesson of my favorite turn! Back in 1979 I was riding the Majestic lift at Brighton and saw this guy cruising down beneath the lift doing this incredibly graceful turn where he dropped his knee, crazy. He was sooo smooth and it looked sooo cool. At that moment I thought, yep I'm going to do that some day. Still dropping the knee 44 years later.

Hard to imagine a history lesson about telemark without including the greatest sabotage action of WWII. It was carried out against the Nazis by a crack team of Norwegian tele skiers. "Seventy years ago, a small team of Norwegian tele skiers were sent from Britain to carry out one of the most daring and important undercover operations of World War II - the aim was to prevent the Nazis from building an atomic bomb." A movie was later made about their exploits, called Heroes of Telemark. I wouldn't be surprised if the story of the Heroes of Telemark could serve as the basis for an entire podcast. That the leader of the mission--a Jewish fellow named Ernst Bloch--went on to found Taos Ski Valley, an area steeped in anti-fascist, anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist lore, is even more intriguing!! -- telemón 🐏🏔️