Skijoring marries the traditional and modern Wests.
BY BELLA BUTLER
Something sort of magical happens at a skijoring event. In the same way that big wildfires create their own weather, the energy of the arena constructs a world of its own, and time is measured in the 30-second intervals of each run. First comes the horse, starting the trance-inducing song with the da-da, da-da, da-da of galloping, followed by the sheer whishhh of the skier flying by. The full weight of hoof on frozen ground, snow spraying in the air and the tension of skis gliding across the track alchemize into something that didn’t exist before. Then, the horse, rider and skier cross the finish line, the crowd erupts in one final burst and the spell is broken—until the next run.
There’s magic outside of that moment, too. If you take a step back from the spectacle of the sport, you’ll find yourself at the intersection of the Venn diagram of Western cultures. The skier stands shoulder to shoulder with the cowboy, joined by the pure celebration of winter. I can’t think of something more Montanan than that.
It’s funny then, how the story of skijoring starts far from Montana, or any other Western state for that matter; the first account of a person being pulled on wooden planks by an animal was recorded hundreds of years ago by a Persian historian in Central Asia’s Altai Mountains, according to Skijor International. Fast forward to the 20th century, when skijoring (translated to “ski driving”) became popular in Scandinavian countries and eventually North America, finding its footing first in places like Lake Placid, New York, and Hanover, New Hampshire. Naturally, Western mountain towns like Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and Jackson, Wyoming, picked up the sport, but races really took hold after World War II.
It’s a story Scotty C. Ping, founder and editor of Skijoring Magazine, offers to tell me on the second day of the 2023 Big Sky Skijoring event.
“The Seventh Infantry over in the Second World War were up in the Alps, and they were skiing, you know, and fighting the Germans,” Ping said. “… A lot of them came back to Colorado, and they ended up dragging behind horses in order to go skiing. And so that’s how really it started, and the Western equestrian skijoring started with the Seventh Infantry.”
“The Seventh Infantry over in the Second World War were up in the Alps, and they were skiing, you know, and fighting the Germans,” Ping said. “… A lot of them came back to Colorado, and they ended up dragging behind horses in order to go skiing. And so that’s how really it started, and the Western equestrian skijoring started with the Seventh Infantry.”
In his tall black cowboy hat and custom black Skijoring Magazine jacket with his name across the chest, I’ve clocked Ping as one of the event’s resident experts, which is important. For how big the competitive circuit has gotten in the U.S., coverage of it only goes so far. Ping wears dark glasses the whole weekend and I never see his eyes, but even without the windows to the soul I can tell he loves this sport— and even more so, its adjacent community—with everything in him. It’s why he founded this magazine four years ago, and why he himself raced for so long. He and every other skijoring junkie will tell you there’s nothing else like it, and Ping knew it the first time he saw it.
“The very first skijoring race that I went to, there was a cowboy out there with chaps and everything, cowboy hat, old timer, you know, he had chew in his mouth, and he’s talking to a guy with purple hair. And he’s saying ‘If you take the gate like this…” They were working together, and I’m going ‘That’s really unique,’” Ping said. He stopped riding after his horse died a few years ago (“because I don’t think I’ll ever get another guy like him”), but he’s done what he can to stay in the sport. Ping and his wife, Francesca Reda, live in Whitefish, but during the winter they travel to the races every weekend.
Big Sky’s race has become one of the larger productions in the state, especially compared to little towns like Wisdom, where the track runs right through town and its 130-some residents gather on the sidelines for a weekend of relief from the bitterest part of a Northern Rockies winter. Montana has become a big stop on the circuit, with nine total events, from the capital in Helena and bigger hubs like Bozeman, to other mountain towns like Red Lodge, West Yellowstone, Big Sky and Ping’s home in Whitefish, among others.
Even one of skijoring’s darlings, Colin Cook, hails from Missoula, where he grew up ski racing with his brother. Now in his 30s, he lives in Bozeman and owns a contracting business, but come skijoring season, he’s better recognized as the stud with multiple championship belt buckles wearing orange ski boots with jeans tucked into them. He’s also the brains behind some of Big Sky’s especially entertaining courses. At the 2023 event, murmurs about whether or not Cook would debut his hot tub idea traveled like gossip between event organizers and staff, but I got the sense nobody actually thought he’d do it. Until he did.
Cook’s “hot tub idea” included putting a hot tub full of people underneath the clearing of the course’s biggest jump. A group of eager volunteers shed their clothes to hop in the tub with White Claws and beers in hand, and the competitive skiers in the open category took turns careening over the partiers as flames shot into the air beside them. It was a show, to say the least.
Whether there are shooting flames or hot tubs or snowmobilers jumping 30 feet above the course (yes, this also happened in Big Sky), or the sport takes its simplest form, free of frills and still bringing people to their feet as horses and skiers fly through the gut of small towns in rural Montana, that magic is undeniable, and the full-embodied spirit of the West is something lived, and something shared.
Bella Butler is the managing editor of Mountain Outlaw.
