Skijoring in Salt Lake City: Snow Rodeo Madness

Skijoring with the Mormons.

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If I had to explain the sport of skijoring to someone, I’d describe it as a combination of water-skiing, rodeo riding and gymnastics. On snow. All at the same time. Yep, it’s as bonkers as it sounds, but it’s a whole lot of fun to watch.

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Skiers and boarders (who seem to be a couple of ski lifts short of a ski resort) hold on to a 30-foot-long rope and get pulled along by cowboys or cowgirls (decked out as if they are in John Wayne movie) on galloping horses. But that’s the easy part. They then need to navigate gates, grab rings from poles and fly over jumps - all while being dragged along at speeds of over 60 kilometres an hour.

Skijoring isn’t some winter sports craze that a bunch of crazies came up with, it’s been around for hundreds of years and started simply as a means of getting around. The word skijoring comes from the Norwegian skikjøring, which translates to “ski driving”. Except the Norwegians weren’t being ‘driven’ by horses, they usually got towed by reindeer. Skijoring took off (so to speak) as a sport in Europe in the 1800’s in Switzerland and even made it into the Winter Olympics at the 1928 St. Moritz games.

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Skijorers have been risking limb and life in the U.S. for over a century, and races take place at ski towns all over the country. But I’m not in a ski town, I’m in the main drag of Utah’s state capital, Salt Lake City, where 500 tonnes of snow have been trucked in from Solitude Resort (well, from the Solitude Resort parking lot) to create the long and narrow course. We might be smack in the heart of a big city, but a lot of the large crowd had the whole western vibe thing going on with cowboy boots, bandanas and big ol’ yee-haw hats. 

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In skijoring, there are two main events: racing and slopestyle. Just the racing part would be hard enough, but the riders manage to jump, dodge and weave the 300 metres course in less than 40 seconds. There are lots of “oohs” and “aahs” from the crowd when riders lose hold off their rope and do cartwheels in the snow. But the biggest cheers are for the slopestyle event where riders get serious air over jumps, while performing somersaults and tricks. Big jumps also lead to spectacular wipeouts. The good thing about snow is that at least it’s a soft landing.  

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When all the skijoring is over, the crowd are treated to some country and western. A band took over the large stage, which was set up at the end of the course, and hundreds of people were soon in neat lines and grape-vining to the right. Then to the left. If you can water ski on the snow being towed by a horse, then why not line dance in the snow, too.

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The Visit Salt Lake Winter Round-up takes place in the first week of February. 

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