KAMAS, Utah (KTVX) — What do you get when you combine rodeo and skiing? In some sense, exactly what you might expect: a horse and rider pulling a rein-wielding skier through an obstacle course. It’s called ski joring, it’s quite a spectacle, and it might just be the next big winter sport in Utah.
Though the sport has Nordic origins – it was originally a form of winter transportation amongst the native Sami people, who used reindeer instead of horses – ski joring came to Utah competitively relatively recently, in 2017.
The sport’s Utahn founding fathers, Brian Gardner and Joe Loveridge, were, simply put, two cowboys and former ski patrollers looking for a fun new hobby.
“When we saw this sport and decided go after it, we just took some horses out into a snowy field and strapped on our skis and grabbed onto a rope and went for it,” Gardner remembers with a laugh. “It was about as simple as that and we were like, shoot, this a lot of fun.”
After getting a taste for it, the pair – who had heard of competitions in nearby states like Montana and Wyoming – thought that the sport might have a welcome home in Utah, too.
“Being that he and I were both avid skiers and cowboys, we saw those other events and we thought: ‘Oh my goodness, there needs to be one of these in Utah,’” Gardner remembers. “Utah has such a strong skiing heritage and such a strong Western ranching heritage that we just thought it was the perfect fit.”
The first year of Utah ski joring was essentially a gathering of Gardner and Loveridge’s friends from both the ski and cowboy worlds. But since then, their “labor of love” has really picked up steam and morphed into a bonafide tourist attraction.
This year’s iteration of the annual two-day competition – which is sold out – will be held February 4 and 5 in Kamas and draw in over 3,000 spectators and just over 200 competitors, Gardner says.
“I think that aside from the competitors really loving it and enjoying it, I think that the local community of Utahns as well as, shoot, we have people travel from Florida, California, and Texas who are flying in just to watch the event,” Gardner says.
One other Utahn who has developed a love for the crossover sport is Caitlin Cottam, who lives in Spanish Fork. She stumbled across ski joring when she was scrolling through Facebook, and — as an already established equestrian — wanted to give it a try.
“I started practicing in my in-laws’ backyard and it just kind of exploded from there,” she says.
This will be Cottam’s second year competing, and her ski partner, Blaire Albers’ first.
Though the pair has only had the opportunity to practice together once, Cottam says they are excited and feel prepared.
When she took up ski joring three years ago, Cottam eased her horse into it by having the animal pull an empty sled first.
“Most of our horses that I’ve used have worked ranches, have roped cattle and stuff, so they’re very familiar with having weight on the saddle and pulling it around,” she says.
She’s confident, too, in Albers’ ability as a skier, and compares the way the skier feels to taking a rope tow up the ski mountain. And, they’ll be competing in the novice division, so it’s really all just for fun, Cottam says.
Aside from the novice division, the competition is further split up into categories. The pro division is reserved for performance horses and elite athletes, and the sport division falls somewhere in between. There is also a women’s only division, a century division in which the skier and rider’s combined ages must add up to be at least 100, an all-around division geared towards competitors who both ski and cowboy, and a snowboard division.
The sport itself is judged by how quickly and accurately the team can complete the course, which is typically 600 to 1000 feet long and arranged in an L or U shape. Skiers need to go over jumps — which range from three to six feet tall — and collect rings during their run on the course.
Although in past years he’s found himself tied up with organizational duties, this year Gardner, too, is getting back to the roots of the competition by making time to compete in the all-around division.
“It is such a special, unique event that really does draw on those two heritages that are so strong in Utah,” he says. “People just took to it.”
