No snow for skijoring? Snow problem

The Jefferson County Fairgrounds sits bare, exposing brown earth where a 900-foot skijoring track should be taking shape. Two weeks before Skijoring the Big Rock, there’s no snow to haul in from Helena or East Helena. In fact, there’s no snow anywhere in the area.

So for the first time in the event’s five-year history, organizers are making their own.

Since Jan. 16, a specialized snow machine has run overnight at Boulder’s wastewater treatment facility, producing artificial snow pile by pile. The solution required equipment donations from Discovery Ski Area in Philipsburg, a 185-kilowatt generator from Western States Equipment Company in Missoula, and the kind of problem-solving that turned a potential cancellation into an experiment in community determination.