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Skijoring in Silverton

2014 February 18
by Rachel Turiel

Skijoring is an old Scandinavian form of transportation (originally using reindeer), but leave it to the Colorado new school crowd to ramp it up to a sport. How it works: the horse, duly prodded, runs at 45 mph straight and single mindedly down a short track. Meanwhile, a skier attached by hand-held rope, careens behind, swishing through gates, grabbing rings, and flying over jumps. In other words totally nutty, but exciting to watch. I figure for horse-people and skiers, there’s a lot to love about the Mountain West, so why not unite and go skijoring together? Here are some photos from the annual skijoring races in Silverton, CO, elevation 9300 ft. The true celebrities are  the horses.

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Lovely Silverton. Someone should set a thriller here. Oh wait, my friend Blake Crouch did: Abandon.

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Many of the riders were women. This girl and her turquoise-bejewled horse were our fave.

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Skier about to sail over a jump at 45 mph.skij6

Rose, if you ever try this, you will wear a helmet even if I have to staple it to your head. Better yet, how ’bout we go cross-country skiing on a nice flat trail?

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Replacing the rings between contestants.

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Da Maestro.

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Just out of the starting gates.

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Another woman and her steed. Skier approaching jump.

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Rose wins the kiss-sneaking contest, naturally.

Happy Tuesday; back soon with a recipe (not for bone broth!), info on a workshop I’m teaching (no mentioning of roadkill!), and more of the usual.

Also, I’m reading Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert and it’s so insanely good even if I can only finish 3 pages before I’m snoring at 9pm. Only 432 pages to go!  And This book was excellent fun.



4 Responses leave one →
  1. Rachel Kohnen permalink
    February 18, 2014

    Read Abandon the end of last year. I stared it down for years before I got the guts to read another Blake Crouch thriller. Then, it didn’t even end up creeping me out! But it did make me miss the mountains.
    Skijoring looks like a blast to watch…thanks for sharing!

  2. Rachel Turiel permalink
    February 18, 2014

    Rachel, Dan and I both stayed up way too late reading Abandon trying to get to a calm place in the book, so we could set it aside and fall asleep!

  3. Rebecca Crouch permalink
    February 26, 2014

    Our neighbor, Jeff, competed in this race! He gives our children rides on his horses, and if she could, Annslee would spend every day all day down by the fence with the horses. Neighbor horses are the best (and cheapest!) kind of horses to have. My horse-lovin’ girl is convinced the number one reason we bought our house was because horses lived next door.

    I loved both of your Abandon comments. Too funny! I’ll have to tell Blake of your trepidation Rachel K and your lack of sleep Rachel T :o) If you haven’t already, you should read Pines which is being made into a tv show. Also, Run is a good one.

  4. October 22, 2014

    Generally I do not read post on blogs, but I would like to say that this write-up very compelled me
    to try and do it! Your writing style has been amazed me.

    Thank you, quite great post.

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