Teleboard: A whole new way to ride!

TELEBOARD -- THE REVOLUTION BY EVOLUTION

Several years ago, Erik and Martin Fey were building snowboards in Martin's Putnam, CT garage. One night Martin produced a long, thin board that was too narrow for the clunky snowboard bindings he had available. On a whim, he mounted two telemark bindings on the board, one in front of the other.

The brothers tried the odd board out by hiking a closed trail at Killington, VT, where Erik was a snowboard instructor. Even wearing lace-up leather boots, they knew instantly they had stumbled onto a product that could revolutionize snow sports. Together with Marie Franzino, they refined that crude first stick into the state-of-the art, patented board now produced for sale by Uniboard Corp. and its affiliates.

The Teleboard works because it successfully combines the best aspects of both skiing and snowboarding. It has the grace and power of the best alpine snowboards, while offering the nimbleness and turning speed of skis.

BUT WHY?

The Teleboard corrects defects intrinsic in the design of snowboards. Rather than placing the weight of the rider on opposing sides of the waist of the board, making it difficult to arc, the Teleboarder's weight presses on the waist of the board. Rather than locking the heels down and restricting movement, the Teleboard's modern telemark bindings allow the rider's weight to move through a wide range, initiating turns with hard forward thrusts and extending the carves by pulling back along the axis of the board.

Despite the use of telemark gear, which in skiing increases the degree of difficulty and generally reduces stability on hard snow, using state-of-the-art telemark equipment on the Teleboard actually gives the rider more control and versatility than that offered by a snowboard. Rather than executing turns with slow toe-heel movements, the Teleboarder turns with a flick if the knees and hips. Instead of standing sideways, making use of poles impossible, the Teleboarder faces the fall line, and can use poles whenever they are desired or useful. Rather than the slow edge-to-edge action intrinsic to the wide snowboard, the Teleboard is longer and half the width, giving it more effective edge and allowing it to turn as fast as a pair of skis without sacrificing flotation. The bumps are no longer off limts.

If sking is the thesis and snowboarding is the antithesis, Teleboarding is the synthesis of the two. Despite its strange appearance and accidental birth, it is the logical next step.