
Despite hundreds of spectators arriving by the busloads, tractors and heavy machinery weaving in between crowds of cowboys, and giant stadium-sized speakers statically coming to life above the Ouray County Fairgrounds in Ridgway — for a split second, it felt like the world was holding its breath.
At the start of a snowy racetrack, with the snow-capped San Juan Mountains in background, Noah Gregory — a veteran skijor competitor and a first generation ranch owner out of Telluride — was trying to calm his hothead racehorse, Dev.
In a mere few seconds, Gregory and Dev would be flying down that snow-covered track, reaching a speed of more than 40 miles per hour, towing a skier behind them.
Gregory, his horse, and his skier were competing in Colorado’s first skijoring competition of the season. It’s an intense and extreme sport that blends Colorado’s wild west with its ski bum culture.
“You're taking a rodeo world and you're taking a skiing world and you're meshing it all together,” said Gregory, who has been competing in skijoring competitions for the last seven years. “As far as I know, the way we skijor is only a Mountain West thing.”
And while Gregory’s right, the sport is unique to the Mountain West with adrenaline-seeking cowboys and skiers who are drawn to the racetrack from all over the country. Skijoring — which literally means ‘ski driving’ in Norwegian — has its roots in Scandinavia, where, centuries ago, Indigenous peoples harnessed reindeer to pull them across the tundra on skis.
Where rivalry meets camaraderie
In modern day, competitive skijoring, a team of three work together. A horse and rider gallop at top speeds over a snowy track, complete with twists and turns and spectators lining either side, while a skier being pulled behind them carves around obstacles and flies over jumps.
Whichever skier and rider team is the fastest and navigates all the obstacles — wins.
But according to Gregory, even though it’s a fierce competition — usually with a hefty prize purse, bragging rights, and a trophy winner’s belt buckle at stake — skijoring events feel more like a family reunion to him than a gathering of rivals.
“It’s the community that you don't see until the last skijor season,” he said. “So it's awesome to get back together with everybody and get back in the rhythm of traveling every weekend to different competitions.”

So every year — starting in January — cowboys and skiers from across the country spend three months competing in different skijoring events across the state. They race, catch up, ask each other about their families, and give each other advice — or in Gregory’s case, help him with Dev.
“I always need help,” Gregory said. “I need other riders, other competitors to help me get Dev to the gate, keep him calm and collected. And that's the beauty of the sport. Other competitors know what it takes to be there, and so we all help each other out.”
Colorado’s fastest growing winter sport?
For the last few decades, Colorado has been home to some of the most competitive skijoring competitions in the country — and the world. But it's only been in the last few years that the sport has caught the attention of the public.
“Ridgway does not typically get a really large crowd,” Josh King, a skier and skijor competitor, said. “So this year when we went to Ridgway, the big question was, ‘What's it going to feel like and what's it going to look like?’ And I heard multiple, multiple, multiple competitors just talking about the size of the crowd — we were shocked and amazed that they stayed all day long until the very last race. That was really cool to see.”
King was introduced to the sport two years ago by Gregory, who at the time, needed a skier. Since then, King, a lifelong professional photographer, has become one of the most recognizable figures in skijoring — largely thanks to his viral social media accounts.
“Not knowing anybody, not knowing anything, I grabbed my camera after I was done competing and just really randomly shot a few [races] and that was it,” King said “…And from there it just went crazy.”
Initially, King says his only motivation was “to get some cool clips of his new friends,” but after his first few videos on TikTok and Instagram blew up, he realized there was potential to help promote the sport itself.

“I think if we just keep pushing out that content and growing the sport, it's endless what we can do,” King said. “And really that's my whole goal is just to blow the sport up as much as possible. It's a really cool sport, it's fun to follow, it's a simple sport… and there's some very, very unique characters who are involved and yeah, I just want to see the sport go to the moon. Really, I just want to see it everywhere.”
And it’s not just the crowds that are growing — new competitors are flocking to register for races to try their hand at the sport too. According to King, every race this season has reached capacity within 24 hours of competitor registration opening, something that was unheard of just a year ago.
Organizing a skijoring race is no easy feat — it takes thousands of gallons of manmade snow, months of planning and connecting with local and national sponsors, a significant amount of knowledge in horsemanship and husbandry, and of course, planning and building the race track itself. But with interest in the sport on the rise, new races opened this year to meet the growing demand, including events closer to the Front Range, like Grand Lake and Estes Park.
CPR News in the saddle
This year, I was one of those new competitors.
I‘ve spent my whole life working with and training horses — from riding stubborn, fat ponies in my home country of England, to teaching riding lessons and working and racing as an amateur jockey to help pay my way through college, to being the first person to sit on a wild mustang, to rehabilitating ex-racehorses — but skijoring was new to me.
I first learned about skijoring just a few years before King became a viral sensation on social media. I was working as an agricultural reporter in the Pacific Northwest, when a rancher told me he traveled to Colorado every year to compete in the quirky, western sport. It sounded exhilarating, so when an opportunity to compete in a race came along, I didn’t hesitate.
My horse, Ari, was a small, scruffy brown mare. During the summer, she works as a ranch horse carrying tourists up the rugged peaks of the San Juan Mountains. But in the winter, she is a skijoring race horse — one that has apparently earned herself quite the reputation on the track.
“Oh, you’re riding the fire breathing dragon?” One competitor asked me after finding out I was riding Ari. “Good luck with that. You better know how to ride.”
Besides being called the fire breathing dragon, I was also told that Ari “hates women” and to “watch out for those teeth” as she was known to bite when putting a saddle on her. Despite her formidable reputation, I quickly realized that Ari — just like the other skijoring race horses — is a special horse.
Around us, cranes and heavy machinery lifted giant stadium-sized jumbotrons into the air above the track, speakers playing Fall Out Boy and Queen echoed throughout the fairgrounds, cowboys yelled and hollered at each other, skiers stretched and chatted about strategy, and the sound of horse hooves thundering on snow-packed ground could be heard in between screams from spectators.

Horses are prey animals and have an instinctive flight response. Something as simple as the sudden sound of a truck backfiring or a plastic bag fluttering in the wind can make even the most well-trained horse spook and bolt.
But despite all the chaos and stimulus, Ari calmly munched her hay and just lazily watched me while I got the two of us ready. Until I sat on her.
Sitting on Ari for the first time felt like a loaded gun ready to fire — the other competitors had been right: on the track, she was a fire breathing dragon and just as fierce of a competitor as any of the other cowboys and skiers racing against us.
In many ways, skijoring was unlike any team sport I’ve done before — not only are you working with a 1,000-pound animal to navigate a manmade-snow-laden track, but you’re also working with a completely different athlete, an athlete who is a pro in a completely different sport.
I quickly learned that the best skijoring teams work together as a single unit. The skier or boarder being pulled yells to the horse and rider to go faster or slower. And the horse and rider have to adjust to help their skier get the cleanest, fastest run. Together, the teams learn each other's strengths and weaknesses, learn how to help and push each other. In our first ever race, Ari, my snowboarder and I placed third.
And Gregory was right —I could not have done it and I definitely wouldn’t have been here, without the quirky, mish-mesh community of adrenaline-junkie skiers and cowboys.
From the second I arrived at the Ouray County Fairgrounds, to the second that Ari and I took off from the start line, I was given everything from advice and strategy tips, to free burritos, to slaps on the back, and “go get em cowgirl”.