What is Skimo?
by Corinne Higgins
I am an endurance athlete. I compete in fairly well known sports in the summer. I mountain bike race and run cross country. But during the winter, my main sport is ski mountaineering, also known as skimo.
When I tell people I “do” skimo, most ask, “What is that?” and THAT is a very good question. SkiMo is similar to backcountry skiing, but is racing and has lighter gear. For example, an Atomic backcountry skiing set-up (boots and skis) weighs about 16 pounds. The Atomic skimo setup weighs around 6.37 pounds.
Now, backcountry skiing is climbing uphill on skis and then skiing amazing powder (most of the time) on the way down, in avalanche terrain. To climb uphill, we take adhesive skins, attach them to the bottom of our skis, and then hike uphill with the skins and skis on with heels unclipped, to allow basically the motion of hiking. The skins have glue on one side, which sticks to the bottom of the ski, and mohair or nylon on the other side. The hair enables the skis to stick to the snow, which provides a surface to step/push off on.
SkiMo is a small, but growing sport. I am on Silverfork SkiMo, the team associated with Brighton. When I first joined, three years ago, there were only 15 kids on the team, now there are over 45. Furthermore, skimo is one of the most recent additions to the Winter Olympics, and will make its debut in 2026 after a successful junior olympic trial in Lusane, Switzerland, in 2020. In fact, Samantha Paisley, a former Silverfork athlete, represented the United States in the games, along with Grace Staberg of Colorado.
The Silverfork team practices at Brighton two times a week, but most of us go out more than that, to train, or just for fun. That being said, practice is always the most enjoyable training because skimo has a super fun community with awesome kids. In addition, the sport has a unique dynamic because it is co-ed, so girls train and compete with boys and vice versa, which is not very common in high school sports. Further, the community is not very big which means everyone knows everyone and younger kids get to train/be around older kids, so they can interact with and learn from the people they look up to.
If you are looking to get involved, or just want to have a good time in the mountains, every other Tuesday, Brighton holds a citizens series race, where a bunch of locals come out and compete, or just go for a stroll. At the end there’s a raffle and a good time had by all.
