Visit Salt Lake brings Skijoring to downtown Salt Lake City
Feb 9, 2024, 7:45 PM | Updated: Feb 10, 2024, 11:27 am
SALT LAKE CITY — It’s not out of the ordinary to see snow in downtown Salt Lake City or visitors walking up and down West Temple, but it will be different to see skiers and horseback riders at the same time.
Visit Salt Lake will host the inaugural Salt Lake Winter Round Up with skijoring as the main event.
“There really haven’t been any major urban skijoring events before,” said Ryan Mack with Visit Salt Lake. He said this event will be one of the first urban skijoring events in the country.
Skijoring is a winter sport where a skier gets pulled by a horse at a fast pace.
“The skier is skiing a course so (they have) to get around different gates and sometimes those gates will take him off a big jump,” Brian Gardner with Skijoring Utah said. The skier also has to grab rings as they go through the course. “You compete for time, from the start line to the finish line.”
Crews were seen setting up barriers and closing the southbound lanes of West Temple from 100 South to South Temple.
Mack said Staker Parson Construction brought 500 metric tons of snow from Solitude Resort to downtown Salt Lake City to create the skijoring course.
Visit Salt Lake said it took them about one month to plan which will serve as an exhibition for the athletes, where they’ll be able to show off their skills and introduce the sport to people who’ve never seen it up close.
“Utah has such an amazing western, ranching heritage and simultaneously is world-renowned for it’s skiing so for us skijoring is Utah sport,” Gardner said.
Visit Salt Lake is also teaming up with the Salt Lake County Arts and Culture and Days of ’47 Rodeo. The event will have arts and crafts for the whole family to enjoy, including curling and a mechanical bull at Abravanel Hall Plaza. There will also be former Olympic alpine racers in attendance.
“We really tout ourselves as this urban, meets mountain destination so we thought what better way to tie in arts, culture, and our heritage here in Salt Lake than an urban skijoring course,” Mack said.
The event is free and takes place from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. For more, including parking information, click here.
Skijoring Utah will host a competition in Heber City on Feb. 16 and 17. For more information, click here.
