{"id":805006,"date":"2020-03-07T20:32:56","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T03:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=380183"},"modified":"2020-03-07T20:32:56","modified_gmt":"2020-03-08T03:32:56","slug":"bruce-stott-of-frisco-still-skijors-in-leadville-like-liquid-silk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/bruce-stott-of-frisco-still-skijors-in-leadville-like-liquid-silk\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Stott of Frisco still skijors in Leadville like \u2018liquid silk\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Longtime Summit County local Bruce Stott, 48, of Frisco poses for a photo with his short giant-slalom race skis and commemorative jacket from a Frisco skijoring event two decades ago during Saturday’s 72nd annual Leadville Ski Joring festival on Harrison Avenue on Saturday, March 7. The Leadvillle Ski Joring competition and Crystal Carnival continues through Sunday, March 8.<\/strong>
Liz Copan \/ ecopan@summitdaily.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

LEADVILLE \u2014 For years, Tim Everett of Jasper, Minnesota had heard of Leadville Ski Joring. After a 13-hour drive on Friday from his home to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Everett got to see it for the first time. He chatted with competing horseback riders and skiers Saturday afternoon under the sun at 10,000 feet while admiring the majestic beautify of Mounts Elbert and Massive on the horizon line.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been to Colorado before,\u201d the 58-year-old carpenter added, \u201cBut not out to the good part. This is just amazing here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did the sport of skijoring \u2014 where a skier navigates slalom-like gates and terrain park jumps while being towed by rope behind a horse and horseback rider \u2014 compare to any sport he\u2019d ever seen before?<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing ever,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, while Everett drove 13 hours across the heart of the High Country, Bruce Stott of Frisco had his own 12-plus hour day. The 48-year-old skijoring veteran arrived at Leadville\u2019s Harrison Avenue at 3:45 a.m., to help turn the iconic 10,000-foot town\u2019s main drag into the skijoring mecca it\u2019s been for more than seven decades.<\/p>\n

He helped manicure the snow, building 8-foot-plus jumps for the high-level Open division, while dump truck after dump truck deposited snow on Harrison Avenue, working through 5 p.m., evening before his sister Vicki Koch, the owner of High Mountain Pies in Leadville, rewarded him with a form of carbo-loading before Saturday and Sunday\u2019s skijoring: two big trays of lasagna.<\/p>\n

After staying with his sister Friday night, Stott joined fellow Open division competitors Shawn Gerber of Edwards and the Dahl brothers, Jason and Greg, to set the course, gauging exactly where gates, rings and jumps should be.<\/p>\n

Then as Saturday\u2019s warm forecast crystallized \u2014 temperatures topped out at a balmy 52 degrees in the afternoon \u2014 Stott, Gerber and the other Open division riders convinced race organizers to bump up their start time to 11 a.m. The change was in order to have the most skilled skiers and the most powerful horses run through the course during colder temperatures earlier in the day before slushed-out snow led to tougher edging conditions and problematic footing for the horses.<\/p>\n

The Open division is the highest level of racers. It includes the likes of Gerber, who\u2019s been racing since 2004, and his good friend Stott who has raced the skijor circuit around the mountain west ever since the former Alpine and freeskier raced at the penultimate Frisco skijor in 2000.<\/p>\n

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