The Tele Mommies Don't Just Want to Have Fun

But just below the surface, permeating the reel was a well-placed satire. The video–posted by the Tele Mommies, a group devoted to supporting women telemark skiers–cleverly if humorously doubled as a commentary on gender dynamics in skiing, revealing common stereotypes that befall women skiers.

“We really enjoy jumping on social media trends by putting a Tele Mommy twist on them,” says Eliza Biondi–a founding member of the group out of Fraser, Colorado, who has been telemarking since she was twelve. “We wanted to make it silly while also highlighting some feminine aspects of being a skier that we should celebrate rather than shame, such as checking your hair strands, all wearing different Skida patterns we love, personalizing skis with pink spray paint and glitter, matching jackets with your friends.”

That dichotomy–of being a fun-loving outfit while also having a pointed agenda–is core to the group. At once inviting and holistic but also driven to make a difference as their significance has grown, the group has not only become a bastion of fun in the esoteric, burden-to-entry-heavy world of telemark skiing; the Tele Mommies have come to epitomize the growing energy of telemark skiing women.

The group’s conception traces its roots back to a video contest put on by CJ Coccia’s TELE COLO, the newschool free-heel advocacy group and movie house that hosts a yearly video submission competition known as the Kings and Queens of the Heel. “The Tele Mommies kind of came about as a group–it was originally Nina Asher, Sylvia Kinosen and Kenzie Epperson-Valum. We joined forces to be the first all-girl entry into TELE COLO’s Kings and Queens of the Heel competition,” says Biondi.

“It was a fun, friendly competition but it ended up being really cool. Eliza and I kind of knew each other through social media, and we really became friends through doing it,” says fellow founding member Nina Asher, a resident of Carbondale, Colorado–whose shorter time telemarking contributes to her refreshing perspective on the sport. “And then I feel like through the Tele Mommie’s Instagram account and doing the competition we met a whole bunch of other girls and were able to get really close to them and that opened up CJ calling all of us to do a segment a couple years ago.”

The Tele Mommies were thus featured prominently in the 2023 TELE COLO film THIS IS TELEMARK, a project and film tour that did much to spur on a fresh energy in telemark. But the Tele Mommies segment captured not just a rising newschool vibe, but a particular building energy amongst women telemark skiers. In a group interview by TELE COLO brand manager Giorgia Menetre, member Brickley Biondi spoke about filming with the ensemble. “I’ve never skied with such a supportive group of ladies, everyone was hyping each other up,” she said.

The Tele Mommies fun-loving vibe imbued the film, and it’s with that energy the group has spread their message, in the process doing much to harness and expose the essence of women telemark skiers. Using their growing reach, the Tele Mommies have worked to bring together geographically disparate women via social media who in previous generations may have never connected.

“It has grown a lot. It's not that much when you compare it to like an actual big group of something on social media, but it feels like a lot,” Eliza Biondi says modestly. “And what's cool is there's a lot of guys and girls that follow us, and we were able to meet other women for the Tele Mommies of the month.”

The Tele Mommy of the Month feature has been part of a wider effort from Asher and Biondi to complement the spirit and reach their Instagram account has garnered with proactively supporting their community and, in Asher’s words: “just lifting up other women.” The monthly feature profiles a cross-section of women with the hope of elevating the community.

“The Tele Mommies of the Month was a fun thing. We decided around this time last year, ‘let's grow this platform.’ There's so many cool women out there. Let's get them out there and show everyone, these are the badass women who rip telemark,” Asher continues.

Asher and Biondi envision profiling a wider range of female telemark skiers this season–including both skiers of the current generation and those that came before. Buttressing that, the group plans to do more meetups while continuing to build the momentum of their social media channels to increase the visibility of women in the telemark scene.

With that the Tele Mommies press on with not only a continued desire for fun and supportive content, but also a purpose that has become more operative as their presence has gained more gravity.

“I think it started as just some silly girls making silly videos and it's turned into something more meaningful,” says Biondi. “Which is great because it's giving Nina and I a passion and then a way to connect with other women, but it definitely filled a void that we didn't even realize was there.”

That void the Tele Mommies do much to fill speaks to the separate sphere that exists for women in telemark skiing, with not only larger barriers to entry in information conveyance and gatekeeping, but even in suitable gear. The Tele Mommies are thus positioning themselves to become an even stronger advocate for women in telemark. “I think [Tele Mommies] can and I think there's lots of room for us to grow into that,” Asher says.

Part of that support is being an asset for women new to telemark skiing.

“I think from the outside looking in it can feel really daunting because you do see a lot of guys rip. Then, the women you do see rip are really, really good. And so you feel like there's a big learning curve getting into the sport,” says Biondi.

Asher agrees. “There is a big learning curve and it is intimidating. And guys aren't always the best to learn from because women's bodies are different,” she says. “So I think it's also that once we can connect with people then we can help each other learn and share tips and tricks, which is definitely something that we want to do more of with those meetups and videos online.”

Beyond sharing information the group strives to bring greater awareness to the gap in available telemark equipment for women, specifically NTN boots, which often don’t cover a wide range of sizes.

Fellow Tele Mommy and Bishop Telemark athlete Sofia Whitefields has endured this gulf, even as a sponsored athlete. “Sofia has had the biggest trouble with ski boots, which is a huge issue across the board in skiing–not just telemarking–for women,” says Asher. “Getting the right size boot with the right flex; the market just doesn't mass produce boots that are made for women's bodies.”

Whitefields elaborates: “A general challenge in finding equipment is finding boots my size. Most places besides Voile did not sell the whole fleet of sizes in the new Scarpa TX Pro boot this year, and I needed a 23 shell which was oddly hard to find. I think in general manufacturers and distributors need to consider that there are small but mighty people, who frankly need small gear.”

While the release of the TX Pro marks a determined step forward for modern telemark equipment, it nonetheless covers a narrow range of women’s sizes–from mondopoint 23 to 27. While larger sizes are covered by the men’s version, women with smaller feet have few options. Many skis shops don’t carry sizes on the far ends of the spectrum, and any skier whose foot lies outside the smaller end of it is relegated to the old 75mm norm. Scarpa’s women’s T2 Eco, a duckbilled stalwart, covers mondos from 21.5 to 26. Even a sponsored athlete like Whitefields has thus been forced toward using the old norm for earning turns, all the while modern touring telemark gear is becoming more available, just not in her size.

Whitefields’ difficulty finding a boot that fits was even a complicating factor in attempting to become a Scarpa ambassador. “I filled out all the forms and jumped through the hoops only for them, after consistent poor communication, to tell me that they couldn’t get an ambassador/sample boot to me in my size,” she says.

To Asher, it’s all endemic of an accessibility gap in women’s telemark equipment. “I think, from a bigger standpoint, it's hard to get into because the equipment isn't there,” she says. “I know telemark doesn't have a lot of equipment to begin with and that's an issue, but it's even more exacerbated when it comes to women’s equipment.”

It’s a scenario that receives little attention in the wider discussion on telemark, even as this quandary has been echoed by other skiers, including WeTelemark’s Diana Rivera, one of the sport’s leading ambassadors, who themselves has struggled to find and keep boots on the new telemark norm that simply fit.

“When I got into it, I wasn't aware of the state of telemark and what gaps there were. I wasn’t skiing and then I got into it and I was like, ‘oh wait, no, there's like really a need for this,’ says Asher.

Even as Asher and Biondi have an eye toward making the Tele Mommies evermore an advocate for telemark skiing women, they remain focused on bringing a fun, supportive vibe to the evolving scene. “I do think Nina and I really want to grow Tele Mommies–we really want to focus on that community aspect. Nina is based in Carbondale, I'm in Fraser, we have good opportunities to do meetups and things like that. We have a community.”

The Tele Mommies’ approach–both meaningful and refreshing–has little equal in all of telemark. Their championing of women in the sport is poised to be instrumental to a more inclusive future for free-heel skiing, and brings to light relevant, pressing issues in a subculture often consumed by counterproductively loud debates on gear and technique. It’s with that mix of determined purpose and exuberant enjoyment of telemark that the Tele Mommies, as grassroots as a group comes, forge on.