Downtown Salt Lake welcomes horses and skiers in first-ever city Skijoring event
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — On the busy city streets next to Temple Square, thousands of Utahns gathered to watch skiers and horses run skijoring courses in an inaugural event on Saturday.
To spark some Western heritage fun in the heart of Utah’s largest city, Visit Salt Lake hosted the first Salt Lake Winter Roundup to take place in downtown Salt Lake, dumping more than 500 metric tons of snow on West Temple in preparation.
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The event centered around the skijoring competition, where horses pulled skiers across the streets who collected rings as quickly as possible. The one-day festival also had food trucks, curling, bounce houses and a mechanical bull.
Kaitlin Eskelson, president of Visit Salt Lake, said festival officials pulled the event together within a month in an effort to provide a family-friendly weekend activity in downtown Salt Lake. She said skijoring felt like the best activity for the festival.
“Skijoring was a perfect blend of our alpine mountain roots that we could do down here in an urban setting, and we just love that juxtaposition,” Eskelson said.
While this is the first event of its kind in the city, Eskelson said they had thousands of people show up. She said they are hoping this is not a one-time festival.
“This is an inaugural event, so we are piloting to see how it goes. We already have thousands of people here, so we think its proof of concept is really great,” she said. “One of the things we do hope is that we do get the Winter Olympics in 2034 and this would be one marquee event that we could have as the lead-up.”
She continued to say they hope to bring it back every year, with participants echoing this sentiment.
“Being [in] downtown Salt Lake is incredible. First year, I hope we can keep going and do it again next year. It’s an amazing event it’s so much fun,” Marquise Young said while holding her horse’s reigns with city sirens sounding in the background.
Young is a skijoring rider and horse trainer who participated in Saturday’s event. She and her horse, Slim Shady, are skijoring champions from 2022 after taking first and second in the pro division. She said they also broke speed records in West Yellowstone before an injury caused them to take a brief break.
Brandon Budge, a skier, described the thrill of skijoring and why he chose the sport.
“Skijoring is just the best. It’s high adrenaline, super quick runs, horses are spraying snow in your face, in and out of gates, it’s awesome,” Budge said. “It would be awesome if we could bring it downtown every year, I think it’d be a great event.”
The inaugural event has come to a close, but given the positive turnout, festival officials and participants are hoping for another downtown skijoring festival next year.
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