Ski Joring this weekend
Skijoring at the Winter Carnival in February, 1961 in Whitefish. (Mel Ruder photo)
The annual Whitefish Ski Joring event will be back in action this weekend, Feb. 19-20.
After announcing in January the cancellation of the highly anticipated event, organizers found a new location willing to host and are now busy preparing for the family friendly showcase of skiing and horseback riding. The competition is normally part of the Whitefish Winter Carnival festivities, but this year was postponed.
The competition will now be held just up the road from the previous location, which was Big Mountain Ranch. The new location is the north field across the road from 1202 Voerman Road in Whitefish, land credit goes to Haskill Creek Farms, Save Farmland and Scot and Carolyn Chisholm. The event will start at noon on both Saturday, Feb. 19 and Sunday, Feb. 20, with the gates opening at 10:30 a.m. each day.
Skijoring is a traditional Winter Carnival event that pairs a horse and rider with a skier being pulled through a course that includes gates, hitting jumps and grabbing rings. The duo with the fastest time wins.
There will be three divisions this year — open, sport and novice.
A Calcutta on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Casey’s in downtown Whitefish gives folks the chance to bid on teams for how they will do in Sunday’s event. An awards ceremony is set for Sunday at the Great Northern from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Historically the Whitefish Ski Joring has been a part of the Winter Carnival festivities for many years. According to the Whitefish Ski Joring website, the event first began in the 1960s on Central Avenue. When that posed concerns for safety, it was moved to a property on Wisconsin Avenue — now where the Stumptown Ice Den is located.
Due to injuries and not being able to find insurance, skijoring in Whitefish took a hiatus for several years before it was brought back in 2003 by a local businessman Scott Ping. It’s now a sanctioned event that is held annually, however was canceled in 2020 due to unfavorable forecast of warm temperatures and rain in late January that year; in 2021 all Winter Carnival events were canceled or modified to a virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To find out the latest information, visit http://whitefishskijoring.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/whitefishskijoring/.