In 2007, on the eve of the Heathen Challenge ski mountaineering race, it snowed a foot. The next day, 14 competitors lined up at Sunlight Mountain Resort in Glenwood Springs for the 11-mile race. When the leaders got to the top of the Heathen ski run they found the head of ski patrol there with a lit charge getting ready to blast the steep terrain. He stopped the skiers, tossed the charge, the slope slid, and the race continued.
If pausing a race for avalanche control sounds a little fast and loose, that’s because it was. Early ski mountaineering in Colorado was equal parts skiing, mountaineering and going with the flow.
“It’s pretty amazing looking back,” said Pete Swenson, who helped organize early ski mountaineering races across the state. “I’d start with the marketing department or head of patrol wherever there was interest and ask, ‘What’s your most challenging terrain?’ If we couldn’t ski it, that became the bootpack.”
Two decades later, the sport — better known now as “skimo” — has gone from the fringes to the global stage, debuting at the 2026 Winter Olympics. But the short, made-for-TV sprint races audiences saw in Italy in February are only one expression of the sport.
In Colorado especially, skimo is one name for many versions of the discipline, from all-night backcountry epics like the Grand Traverse to early-morning, resort-based uphill races to more technical events in the San Juan mountains. Skimo’s definition may be shifting, but its roots still run through terrain, community and a shared love of moving quickly in the mountains.
Colorado builds a sport
Swenson, a Frisco father of two, first encountered skimo around 2005, when a group of Crested Butte locals persuaded him to try a race. The race was small, and Swenson competed on borrowed gear. A handful of European athletes showed up, offering a glimpse of a more established racing culture. Hooked, Swenson later traveled to Europe for the world championships and realized what the sport looked like on a bigger stage.
“I thought, we could do this in Colorado,” he said.
Around the same time, a loose network of races had taken shape across the West — in places like Crested Butte, Aspen, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Whitefish, Montana. Swenson helped formalize that momentum, launching a series of competitions that would eventually become the Colorado Ski Mountaineering Cup.
In the early years, the races were as much about exploration as competition. Once Swenson had buy-in from a resort, course design followed the terrain. The routes favored steep bootpacks, technical descents and long, punishing climbs that tested a racer’s full skill set. At a national championship in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, competitors climbed a ladder placed inside Corbet’s Couloir. In Crested Butte, racers had to navigate the exposed Guide’s Ridge climbing route.
“We always tried to have some really bad skiing,” Swenson said. “It needed to be challenging.”
That ethos — part race, part mountaineering objective — defined Colorado’s version of the sport. By the late 2000s, Colorado became one of the country’s most active skimo hubs, anchored by a tight-knit group of elite racers based in Crested Butte and the Roaring Fork Valley.
“There was this first wave of athletes — what people called the ‘Crested Butte mafia,’” said Joe Risi, who took over the race series from Swenson in 2015. “They were fully outfitted, had sponsors. It felt like this thing was about to take off.”
The scene was small, but visible enough to draw in the next generation.
Jessie Young, who grew up in Aspen, first encountered skimo watching her husband race the Heathen at Sunlight. She was intrigued by the format but more so by the community — particularly the women racing at a high level.
“I saw racers like Sari Anderson and Stevie Kremer from Crested Butte and wanted to be part of the community they’d formed around skimo racing,” she said.
Like many first-time skimo racers, Young’s early races were less about competing than simply finishing. When she first raced the Power of Four, a grueling 22-mile traverse of all four of Aspen Skiing Company’s mountains, she barely made the cutoff.
“I think I finished second to last,” Young said. “They had packed up the finish line, and there was just one staff person there with my parents because everyone else was already at the after party.”
Fifteen years later, Young helped the U.S. qualify for a spot in the 2026 Winter Olympics and traveled to Milano Cortina as an alternate in the mixed relay — her rapid trajectory not unlike the sport’s own evolution.
The Olympic Stage
By the time ski mountaineering made its Olympic debut in February, it had been completely reshaped, “made for TV.” There was no long, wandering course like the Grand Traverse or sketchy bootpack like Guide’s Ridge. In their place: short, tightly controlled sprint and relay formats that could unfold in minutes, on compact courses built largely on groomed snow.
For Young, who cut her teeth on Colorado races and later competed in European events like the Pierra Menta and world championships, the difference is significant.
“In short, no,” she said, when asked whether the Olympic format felt like “real” skimo.
“It’s great to have it in the Olympics and hopefully is a stepping stone to include the other disciplines and more interesting courses in the future,” she said. “But skimo needs to use the natural terrain of a mountain and include both technical uphill climbing and descents that require choosing the best line down technical and challenging terrain.”
The transition toward a more compact, spectator-friendly format began more than a decade ago, as the sport’s international governing body began pushing for Olympic inclusion. Organizers introduced sprint-style races as a way to make skimo more accessible to audiences and broadcasters.
Pete Swenson was in the room when those decisions were taking shape.
“At the time, we were trying to figure out how to make it something you could actually film,” he said. “If you could keep it small, you could put it on TV. We had no idea then what drones would eventually be able to capture.”
The result was a format that helped open the door to the Olympics — but also one that, in his view, captures only a narrow slice of what the sport can be.
“It’s not a negative,” Swenson said. “But it’s not the crown jewel.”
Gear, access and safety
On any given winter morning in Colorado, skimo looks like many different sports at once.
At resorts along the Front Range like Arapahoe Basin and Copper Mountain — part of a growing network of ski areas that allow uphill travel — hundreds of skiers skin up groomed runs before the lifts spin. For many, these routes offer a controlled, lower-risk alternative to the backcountry in a state where avalanche danger is a constant consideration.
Elsewhere, races still lean into steep, technical terrain. Across the state, events now range from short, high-intensity efforts to full-day backcountry traverses.
That variation reflects both geography and participation. In recent years, the sport has drawn a broader mix of athletes — from longtime backcountry skiers to runners and cyclists looking for a winter outlet.
Davide Giardini saw that shift coming.
In 2019, the Boulder-based former pro triathlete bought a used uphill setup and headed to Eldora with a friend. He hated it.
“Anton (Krupicka) was there lapping us, and I was like, ‘Man, this sucks,’” Giardini said. “We had such little elevation compared to the Alps, so I wanted to do multiple laps, but the gear was holding me back.”
He sold the setup almost immediately, bought lighter equipment, and signed up for a few races around the state. This time, it clicked.
But what stuck with him wasn’t just the sport — it was how hard it was to find.
In Boulder, Giardini was used to packed group rides and trail runs that were consistent, visible and easy to join. Skimo, by comparison, felt hidden.
“I kept thinking, why isn’t this like cycling or running?” he said. “We have the terrain. We have the athletes. But people don’t even know it exists.”
Rather than trying to reshape the sport itself, Giardini focused on creating more ways into it. Through his work with gear manufacturer La Sportiva, he helped build momentum around informal meetups, demo days and group sessions at Eldora — efforts that eventually coalesced into Boulder Skimo.
Now, Friday morning uphill sessions draw hundreds of participants.
“It’s impossible to skin alone at Eldora on a Friday anymore,” he said.
But visibility alone wasn’t enough. The sport itself had to become easier — and, in Colorado especially, safer — to access. For years, ski mountaineering came with a built-in barrier: heavy, inefficient gear and a steep learning curve that often required mentorship just to get started.
“The first time I tried it, I fucking hated it,” said Joe Howdyshell, a longtime coach and co-founder of Summit Skimo. “It felt unathletic and slow and dumb.”
A few weeks later, a friend loaned him a lighter, more modern setup.
“I ran up a mountain and was 100% in love,” he said.
That shift — from heavy, cumbersome gear to lightweight, purpose-built equipment — has been one of the biggest drivers of the sport’s growth.
“If you’re going uphill on a 6-pound setup instead of a 15-pound setup, you’ve got a much better chance of enjoying it,” said Doug Stenclik, co-founder of Cripple Creek Backcountry, one of the first U.S. retailers dedicated entirely to backcountry-specific ski gear.
At the same time, the expansion of resort uphill routes gave newcomers a place to learn without immediately committing to avalanche terrain — a critical entry point in Colorado’s snowpack.
The way people enter skimo has changed with it.
“We used to see people come in who had been mentored into it,” Stenclik said. “Now we get people who have never done it before, and they want the nice gear right away.”
Many of them, he added, aren’t traditional skiers. They’re endurance athletes, drawn less by the descent and more by the effort of going up.
That shift has reshaped not just who shows up, but what skimo looks like once they do.
A sport without a single shape
At the entry level, skimo looks almost nothing like it did two decades ago. In addition to marquee races like the Power of Four and the Grand Traverse, a growing number of smaller events and race weekends now include multiple formats: vertical races, sprints, relays, and longer individual efforts. Youth programming is on the rise across the state, and clubs like Boulder Skimo lower the barrier to entry for new participants.
For Young, that expansion has been one of the most noticeable changes over the course of her career.
“When I started, it was a pretty small group of higher-level athletes, mostly from a handful of mountain towns,” she said. “Now it’s pulling from a lot more places and a lot more backgrounds.”
The structure around the sport has also begun to evolve. In recent years, the national governing body USA Skimo has expanded its race calendar and placed greater emphasis on building a national circuit that feeds into international competition. More Americans are racing World Cups, often spending entire winters in Europe to gain experience and accumulate points — a shift Young saw firsthand as she helped the U.S. secure an Olympic berth.
That investment is beginning to show results, particularly at the junior level, where U.S. athletes have started to find success on the international stage.
Even within the racing calendar, skimo now spans everything from short, on-piste efforts to technical alpine races — and plenty in between.
“I’ve been saying for a long time that ‘skimo’ is kind of a bad name,” Stenclik said. “It makes it sound like one thing, when it’s really not.”
The Olympic format, he added, captures only a narrow slice of that spectrum.
Mark Koob, who organizes races across Colorado and recently launched the Colorado Skimo Cup series, sees a familiar pattern.
“Think about bike races,” he said. “How many different flavors and styles of cycling events are there in Colorado? Short track, the Leadville 100, enduros, organized road rides like the Triple Bypass …”
Ski mountaineering, Koob believes, is heading in the same direction: not toward a single identity, but toward a broader ecosystem of experiences.
“I think races are going to get more specific. Like, ‘oh this is a mountaineering race, where you need to wear a harness and do a via ferrata and all the descents are super hard.’ And some will be more geared toward sprints. There are so many things people want — why not try to do it all?”
One path — or many
No one knows skimo’s divergence better than Crested Butte Olympian Cam Smith.
Smith came up through the same grassroots Colorado scene that defined the sport’s early years. His first race was a local event at Lake Irwin when he was a college student at Western — he didn’t finish. Eventually, he’d go on to set course records at the Grand Traverse, Power of Four and Gothic Mountain Tour.
At the same time that he was becoming known for his endurance and technical skills in skimo, Smith also started competing internationally at ski mountaineering World Cups. Abroad he got humbled, quickly.
“I was near last place in the individual race, mid-pack in the vertical, and did OK in the sprint around the same time I was setting the record for those races back home,” he said.
This intimate knowledge of skimo’s different personalities proved crucial in the lead-up to the Olympics. Back in 2021, Smith shifted his focus, moving away from longer, marathon-style efforts and toward shorter, higher-intensity training designed to mirror sprint and relay formats. He spent winters racing in Europe, chasing points, and competing against the world’s best.
The shift paid off. Smith became one of the athletes central to the U.S. effort to qualify for the Olympic Games — a process that required not just individual performance, but a sustained, team-wide push across multiple seasons.
But even as his racing evolved, the connection to Colorado’s version of the sport remains.
“The Grand Traverse is the direct catalyst for the best things in my life,” he said. “It’s the reason I got into ski mountaineering in the first place.”
For the next generation, Smith’s path may look like a blueprint: start local, build skills, step onto the international stage. But it’s no longer the only one. In Colorado today, skimo can mean chasing World Cup points — or skinning laps before work. It can mean sprint races on groomed snow, or all-night traverses across the Elk Mountains.
It can also mean going to the Olympics.