Abstracts? Yes!
The Skijoring Cowboy
Skijoring? Never heard of it!
Ski…Jor…ing?
When I first heard about skijoring, I thought it sounded weird and was sort of hard to spell! Skijoring is ‘ski driving’ or ‘ski pulling’ in Norway.
A rider on horseback uses a rope to ‘tow’ a skier or a snowboarder. If they get up enough speed, the skier lets go of the rope, and continues on over a jump and usually does a trick in the air. The rider in the image above has already pulled the rider and is heading down the rest of the track.
This event was held in Calgary at the Confluence Historic Site. It was a beautiful location next to the Bow river.
One of the things you need for this event is snow (duh) however snowfall is getting harder to predict. Before this event, there had been a month of above average temperatures in Calgary with not one snowflake!
I emailed the organizers to ask if the event was going to go ahead. Of course it was. All they had to do was truck in some snow! So they did. as luck would have it, there was also a good snowfall a few days before the event. I noticed that after this event, Calgary had major snowstorms so the date they picked missed all of that!!
This event was exceptionally well run. They had campfires and seats around them to warm up. it added to the fun of the event as you met your neighbor (and Probably Discussed the cold weather!!)
There were four performances over two days each approximately two hours long. The trick was to make sure you were dressed warm enough because the weather was around -20. I looked at the the riders and I just saw cowboy boots. I'm not sure how many wool socks you could put on inside their boots? I really don't know how they kept warm! It was freezing!
My hotel was a 10 minute walk which helped as I was lucky enough to take a break between the performances. I downloaded my images and warmed up and then headed back.
At one point standing along the rail, with several photographers inside the ring blocking my view, I thought why I am here? I realized all I had to do to work around them, was to change up how I was photographing. The image above was a result of that ‘change up’ in thinking.
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Skijoring 2027
If you are interested in attending this event, sign up for notification of the 2027 dates at Skijoring Canada. Banff and Calgary are the two locations in Canada.
January and February - winter in Alberta!!