Words: Colin Clancy 2020-09-15 16:16:15
Save for the tracks of the rodeo queen carrying the American flag, and the skiing duck mascot that hyped up the crowd, the corduroy is pristine. The lack of tracks is a bit disconcerting, but by now I can visualize every jump and turn. It takes a while for us to get the all-clear. I stretch while my teammate Jake walks our horse Bruce in circles. It’s bluebird and 40 degrees—the cold won’t be an excuse today. We splay the rope out and I grab it somewhere in the middle. I hear Brian the announcer shout our team name over the PA system: “Bruce on the Loose!” When the starter drops the orange flag, Jake gives a slight look back and takes off. I squeeze with all the strength my hands can muster, and for an instant it feels like the rope might rip me right out of my bindings. Then we’re moving. We nail the slingshot start and I carve high up on the berm, sending me into the first jump. I land, then yell to Jake—and Bruce—to hit it. I pull myself up the rope, hand over hand, as I’d seen the fastest racers do last night. It’s a good line through the first couple of gates. By the time I’m setting up for the second jump, we’re at full speed. And damn, does it feel fast. The second jump is sloppy and I’m late into the next gate. While I play catch-up, Bruce keeps right on accelerating. I let rope slide through my hands until I’m at its knotted end, carving toward the first of the rings. I swipe at it and miss, but that’s OK. We are cruising and can afford a small deduction. Now I just have to hold on for a few more gates. I eye up the last jump—and the sharp left turn beyond. I’m way out of position. Out of instinct, I speed check—no big deal on a GS course, but when you’re at the other end of a rope from 1,200 pounds of muscle at full gallop, it’s problematic. The tug jolts me off balance, and as I hit the jump, I know I’m screwed. My skis are still in the air as my hip slams the ground, sending up a fine cloud of snow and a crowd full of groans. “You all right, buddy?” I hear Brian say over the loudspeaker. I give the biggest thumbs up I can muster before standing and gingerly skating off. Anybody who came for carnage didn’t have to wait long today. Part ski racing, part rodeo, skijoring is a fast-paced free-for-all—a horse and rider whipping across open ground as a skier drags from a rope behind, weaving through obstacles at breakneck speed. A ski-town spectacle that trades steep slopes for flat, groomed tracks (often right through the middle of town), this is a cowboy pond skim on steroids—the West’s wildest show on snow. Two days earlier, I took my place in line behind a bunch of gristly cowpokes at the Zermatt Hotel in Midway, UT. Their Stetsons weren’t the cowboy copies you see inside the chalet at Deer Valley. These had been in the mud a time or two. A buzz of nervous energy filled the room as we waited to pick up registration packets for the annual Skijoring Utah event. I’d never run a skijoring race in my life. Truthfully, I’d never even seen one. It’s possible that most of that energy was coming from me. I ran into my friend and the event’s master of ceremonies, Brian Tolbert, who, despite an Under Armour vest, looked and talked the part of an old-time horse broker. Adorned with a handlebar moustache and ten-gallon hat, he knew the speed of just about every horse—and skier—racing that weekend. With the pace of a stock show auctioneer, he hooked horseless skiers up with skier-less riders. This clearly wasn’t his first rodeo. But it was mine. When I asked for advice, he doled out tips without hesitation. They had nothing to do with strategy, or form, or even wax. Instead, they were all about gloves. “Get the knit ones,” he said. “Those sheet-metal gloves with the blue rubber-dipped palms.” The rope can be pretty tough to hang onto—especially at the start. Brian knows because, in addition to acting as emcee, he’s a longtime competitor. “Your horse, let them ease into it,” he said, hands outstretched in demonstration. “They hit hard. The acceleration’s faster than a frickin’ snowmobile. It will shock you.” He paused to point out Dillon Flinders, the 19-year-old who had won the event two years running. A former highly ranked junior ski racer, Flinders nowadays competes on the Freeride World Qualifier series and a pro downhill mountain biking circuit. “He’s a freak,” Brian said. “The nicest kid you’ll ever meet, but he’s trounced us the last few years. He’s a beast.” Lanky and goggle-tanned, Dillon was top dog in the niche crowd crammed into the Zermatt. He doled out high fives and handshakes as he moseyed toward us wearing the big, broad smile of someone who knew he was the hands-down favorite to win. Seeing my chance, I asked for a tip. “Find a pair of gloves that are going to hold that rope,” he said. The first race less than 24 hours away, I got home and grabbed a flashlight, headed to the barn, and looked for some damn gloves. Although competitive skijoring is now commonplace in the American West, its origins are more global. Skiing behind horses, dogs and reindeer was a common mode of transportation for military and civilians in countries like Switzerland and Finland long before the addition of jumps, rings and timing chips. Skijoring in the United States dates back to winter carnivals of the early 1900s in places like Hanover, NH; Lake Placid, NY; and St. Paul, MN. Skijoring races took place as early as the 1930s in mountain towns like Steamboat Springs, CO and Jackson, WY. Interest in the sport waned in the 1970s, but it experienced a resurgence in the mid ’90s and has been gaining popularity in rugged mountain towns ever since. There are now dozens of races every winter across the country, especially in the Rocky Mountains. The Skijoring America National Finals take place in Red Lodge, MT every March. Perhaps the most well-known race today, the Leadville Ski Joring event in Leadville, CO, dates back to 1949. One account credits the birth of the Leadville race—which runs right down Main Street—to a man named Tom Schroeder, who claimed there wasn’t a horse alive fast enough to lose him on a pair of skis. Schroeder went on to get elected as justice of the peace in Leadville and skied well into his 80s. Skijoring even has Olympic history. It made a singular appearance as a demonstration sport at the 1928 Games in St. Moritz, where rider less horses pulled skiers en masse across a frozen lake. This weekend’s event has Olympic ties as well. The venue at Soldier Hollow Nordic Center was the site of the cross-country skiing and biathlon events of the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. The Soldier Hollow race course is a flat 500-foot stretch of corduroy with jumps, metal stands holding grab-able rings, and shin-high, red and blue plastic gates. The fastest combined time of a Friday run and a Saturday run claims the cash, title and belt-buckle prize. Missing gates, jumps or rings results in time penalties, but crashing, dropping the rope or failing to make the finish gate knocks you out of the running. I’m not the only one new to this. So are my teammates, Jake Birchell and his 7-year-old quarter horse, Bruce. Jake is family, and we conjured up this skijoring plan over homebrewed IPAs back when February seemed a long way off. Jake’s a rancher, cowboy and father of three, and he’s one of the calmest and most collected people I know. Still, I can tell he’s a bit nervous as he saddles Bruce. The horse, bred for “cuttin’ cows” as Jake puts it, has been practicing by towing the kids around their pasture on sleds. We talk strategy as I boot up. “It’s zero to 35 [mph] in about three jumps,” he warns. “And when I get him wide open running, I don’t know how easily I can shut him down.” The last part scares me. I don’t want to crash, but my biggest fear is the rope ripping out of my hands at the start, leaving us dead on arrival. We decide that for the first night’s run we just want a clean finish and aren’t too concerned with getting Bruce up to his top speed. We’re racing in the novice division, so any decent time tonight should keep us in the running for Saturday’s final. Racing starts with the sport division. There are plenty of wipeouts and dropped ropes. The crowd cheers with each run. Cowbells clang and country music blasts. The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (and their film crew) are in attendance. Competitors range from a 7-year-old girl on horseback pulling her 5-year-old sister, to an 82-year-old former ski patroller. Both extremes of the age spectrum get big cheers from the bundled crowd. So too do the skiers decked out in lederhosen, Hawaiian shirts and full-on leather-fringed chaps. And, of course, every crash gets an ovation. Brian runs up and down the course, calling the action with microphone in hand. He’s charming in a way most commentators can only imagine practicing in the bathroom mirror. He repeats the mantra, “The number one rule of skijoring is ‘don’t drop the rope,’” so many times the crowd starts yelling it back at him. The pro division is a whole different level of competition. Many of these skiers represent race teams from nearby resorts like Sundance and Park City. The riders are local 4H and rodeo stars, atop steeds from breeders whose logos adorn sponsor banners. The pros start well back of the actual starting line—running perpendicular to the course—so that when the horse gets moving, the skier shoots through the starting gate like the end of a bullwhip. Rather than cowboys and cowgirls, the term “jockey” comes to mind. The riders yell with that high-pitched he-ah of spaghetti westerns, pushing their horses faster and faster. For them, it’s not a game of finding a happy medium on the speedometer; it’s about hauling ass and hoping their skier can keep up. Dillon, the teenage champion, is in his element. He is ungodly fast, absorbing the brunt of the jumps with his knees so that he seems to gain time in the air rather than lose it. Dillon’s style combines the powerful carving strength of a racer with the loose and forgiving flow of a park skier. It’s hard to believe anyone could beat him. When the sun sets, it cools off fast. Under the stadium lights, the snow gains an icy sheen. Turns chatter like television static. The course has gone from friendly to boilerplate in under an hour. My toes are numb by the time it’s finally our turn to run. I’m too cold to be nervous. Bruce starts up at a trot and we ease our way out of the start. By this point, the course is rutted and it’s easy to find the right line. The first few gates feel painfully slow, and I yell at Jake to hit it. He does, and the run feels good, not much tougher than a beer league GS course. Jake and I hoot and holler as we cross the finish line. A clean run—it’s exactly what we wanted. It felt pretty fast too. There’s a letdown, though, as Brian calls out our time: We’re a good five seconds out of contention—even in the novice division. “I felt like we were going pretty dang fast,” Jake says as he tows me back to the start. “We’ve got to kick it into gear tomorrow. We’re going wide open.” By 10 a.m. the crowd is already larger and rowdier than last night. We won’t have to wait long. We’re the very first team out of the gate, and I’m the day’s first casualty. After my big fall, the grandstands offer cheers and high fives. I take a bit of satisfaction in watching the next five competitors wipe out behind me. The course is fast—it takes a few guinea pigs like me to figure that out. “What do you think went wrong?” I ask back at the trailer. “Just a shitty skier behind you?” “I don’t know,” Jake chuckles, cracking a beer. “We just went too fast at the end, I think. I should have probably slowed down a little. I could tell you was off balance. I looked back at you right before that last jump, and then I looked back again and you were sideways in the air.” I ask if he felt the rope go slack when I let go. “Just like a fish bustin’ off the line,” he says. Despite my DQ, I’m full of adrenaline as we join the family in the crowd, free of pressure and ready to party. Jake’s three-year-old is the first to greet us. “You didn’t hold on tight!” he yells to me, an astute observation if there ever was one. Jake gets a call that one of his heifers back home is in labor, but as he packs to leave, we’re already talking about next year. “We’ll have you out to practice in our pasture,” Jake says. “I can get out the Bobcat and build up some jumps.” I catch Dillon after he nails one of the fastest runs of the weekend. “That run was fast, but I think it’s actually beatable, so we’ll see,” he says, all smiles. I admire his cool. There’s big money on the line, a total event purse of $15,000 across all divisions, with $7,000 of that going to the pro division winners (45 percent to the skier, 45 percent to the rider, and 10 percent to the horse)—not to mention belt buckles. In the distance, Brian’s voice echoes over the PA, egging the crowd on. “Get that horse a’ movin’!” he yells, as another team launches out of the gate. Dillon’s run holds up—his third title in as many years competing. It’s his second year in a row winning with rider Clayson Hutchings and horse Wanda—their team aptly named Repeat. Walking out through the muddy mess of aluminum trailers, diesel pickups and neighing horses, I start my rig, already daydreaming of next February. I’ll be ready—gloves with rubber-dipped palms and a black felt Stetson with a little dirt on the brim. Photo Caption: Grip is key. Any slip could prove to be a quick end to your skijoring competition. Holding on is a challenge unto itself, let alone pulling in and letting out slack as you navigate the twists, turns and jumps along the way. Photo: Eric Dyer
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