Ski Joring in Leadville

The first weekend of March (March 3) is a weekend of crazy history and celebrations in Colorado. Last year we went to the Frozen Dead GuyDays in Nederland, a celebration of an illegal aliens quest for cryogenics gone wrong. This year we decided to do something less morbid and went to Leadville for ski joring. 

' Ski Joring is a competition where a horse and rider pull a skier at a fast pace through a course that has gates, jumps and rings. The skier is timed through the course, and penalties are assessed by missing gates or jumps, and by missing or dropping any of the rings.'

The Leadville Ski Joring  event has been going on in Leadville since 1949, and is one of the premier events of its kind in the country. We were all eager and excited to see what all the fuss was about.

We left early in the morning to head up to Leadville (which I thought was only about an hour and a half away and ended up being three hours away).  We drove with Mom and Dad and our neighbors, Kristin and Nate, came along. It was snowy all the way up, making the traffic slow, and starting the fear of the weather in Leadville. Leadville was nice and sunny (nice being relative because it was still only about 13 degrees).  Mat and Andi had gotten us a perfect location along the ski joring route where we could see both jumps and two of the ring sets. 

I thought it was going to be a fun and interesting event but it was WAY cooler than I expected. Who would have known that watching a man getting ripped across snow covered terrain by a speeding horse would be so enjoyable? It was fun to cheer for the skiers and even to cheer for the horses and riders (who we saw on multiple runs, not just one like with the skiers).  We started hoping for a crash because, honestly who doesn't like a good crash (Funnies Home Video's has proven this point) but then there was a HUGE crash right in front of us. A man got yanked to hard and fell right on his back, you could hear the entire crowd moan as he hit, it looked like he got the wind knocked out of him and i am sure he was more hurt than he let on.  After that I was sad that I had wished for the crash.  There were other mishaps  but most of them involved the horses  like rogue horses who buck and won't run, horses who run the wrong direction and riders that fall off. There was one man who, while wiping the horse to go faster, wiped his hand was bleeding pretty bad.  Although these things were cool, it was so great watching someone complete the run, land the jumps, get the rings and ride behind a beautiful speeding horse. 

Afterwards we went to Mat and Andi's house for some delicious chili and games. As always it is so much fun to be at their house and play with them.  Overall it was a great day. I would definitely go back and I am now a fan of this obscure and strange sport.

Here you can see the both the rider/horse and the skier.

The skier starts moving faster than the horse so when going off jumps there is slack in the line. The skiers must tighten and release the slack while going to minimize the wip lash effect.

The horses really were amazingly beautiful while running full out.

 For more/better video's check out Dad's blog. He had his flip so there are a lot more (even the one of the crash).