This weekend in Boulder is going to be sunny and unseasonably warm, but the Jefferson County Recreation Park will be filled with full-on winter fun as the inaugural running of Skijoring the Big Rock transforms the fairground into a spectator-friendly snow track of speeding horses and slaloming skiers.
The event, first slated for 2020 but canceled that year for lack of snow, is back for 2022, offering two days of competition and spectating, plus in-town entertainment and parties throughout the weekend.
“Skijoring in itself is a mix of cowboys on horses and hippies on skis—who’s got the fastest horse and who’s got the fastest skier,” said Melissa Ostrander, the president of the Boulder Valley Skijoring Association, a nonprofit created ahead of the ill-fated 2020 event. In skijoring, a rider on horseback tows a skier along a course. At this event, skiers will swing to the right of the rider towing them along a J-shaped course, carving around gates (left of blue, right of red), skiing over rollers and grabbing hoops along the way. Competitors’ runs are timed.
