Skimo sounds like it could be the name of a cartoon mascot for the Milan Cortina Olympics, but it’s actually a ski discipline making its Olympic debut as the first new sport added to the Winter Games program since 2002.
Skimo, short for ski mountaineering, is a form of skiing that is popular among Colorado backcountry enthusiasts. Using specialized gear designed for ascending and descending, they climb uphill with traction-giving “skins” attached to their skis, then remove the skins and ski down untracked slopes on peaks far from resort crowds, including fourteeners. A trip can consume the better part of a day.
On the competition side, the most popular form of skimo racing in the U.S. generally takes an hour and a half to two hours, most of which involves climbing 4,500 feet or more, followed by a fast ski descent.
At the Olympics, though, skimo racing will look very different.
There will be a sprint event on Feb. 19, a series of three bracketed heats with six skiers in each, heats taking three to four minutes to complete with an ascent and descent. There is also a mixed relay event on Feb. 21, with one man and one woman on each relay team, doing two laps each with an ascent and a descent on each lap. That race will last about 30 minutes.
The U.S. will be represented in both by Cam Smith of Crested Butte and Anna Gibson of Jackson, Wyo. Smith has been called the face of the sport in the U.S.
“It’s a pretty exciting moment for us,” said Pete Swenson of Breckenridge, who was instrumental in bringing ski mountaineering to Colorado 20 years ago.
The roots of competitive ski mountaineering sprang from the Alps. At the 2006 world championships in Italy, Swenson discovered the game-changing ski mountaineering gear that had been invented there, revolutionizing climbing and descending mountains on skis.
“I saw the scene and came away thinking, ‘We’ve got to do this in the U.S.’ specifically in Colorado,” Swenson recalled recently. “I was a little biased, because that’s where I live. I was a ski rep, so I knew everyone in the industry. It was a case of calling all my friends and saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this.’”
Swenson helped launch a race series called the Colorado Ski Mountaineering Cup in 2007 that is still active. He says about 14 people competed in the first event.
“It got going pretty small, but there were enough industry players in that segment that realized, ‘We’ve got to support this sport if we want to get it going here,’” Swenson said.
The 40-mile Grand Traverse from Crested Butte to Aspen over Star Pass, with 6,800 feet of climbing, predated the series Swenson created. It began in the late 1990s and is still going strong.
“It’s absolutely considered the queen of American skimo racing, the oldest and probably most prestigious,” said Rory Kelly, a former U.S. skimo team member who lives in Breckenridge.
In the early days of the Grand Traverse, skiers competed on lightweight Nordic gear using telemark technique with free heels and alternating bent knees. Telemark can be very difficult to learn and master. It also wasn’t well-suited to long backcountry trips.
“It was pretty miserable — the Grand Traverse on Nordic gear is not great,” Swenson said. “Then the skimo stuff came along. I think one year, probably 10 teams had it, and the next year, probably all but 10 teams had it. It completely transformed that event.”
With ski mountaineering gear, heels are free to move up and down in climbing mode, but are locked down for descents. That means skiers can use the same downhill technique they learned for resort skiing.
“In Colorado, spring mountaineering is really as good as it gets when the snowpack stabilizes,” Swenson said. “That’s where the fast and light skimo gear has really made that sport what it is. If you want to ski couloirs in the Gore (Range), or go up and down a fourteener, or connect fourteeners, the lighter, better gear has brought the backcountry into being more accessible to good skiers.”
Ski mountaineering got a boost from the COVID years when people were craving outdoor recreation and resort options were limited.
“COVID really accelerated it when people had more time on their hands and less to do – movie theaters were closed and resorts were putting limits on daily customers,” Kelly said. “The backcountry kind of exploded. It’s been busy ever since.”
Skimo gear also spawned the popularity of “uphilling,” which is skiing up and down slopes at ski resorts before the lifts open.
“I used to live in Boulder, and uphilling at Eldora in the morning, you’d go up there and there’s 100 people before the lifts open, skinning in the pre-dawn hours before work,” Kelly said. “Similar in Breckenridge, there’s always a big contingent of people skinning up here. A-Basin, they do a race series (that) often draws 100-150 people. Uphilling at resorts has been a huge part of the growth of the sport.
“You don’t have to worry about avalanches, you don’t have to have a beacon, shovel and probe, training and experience about avalanche education,” Kelly added. “You can just go to the resort and expect it to be safe and reliable.”
Skimo hasn’t been confirmed yet for the 2030 Winter Olympics, which will be held in the French Alps, but prospects seem good because France is a hotbed for the sport. In the meantime, skimo fans will surely savor the Milan Cortina races next week.