While relatively new to Central Montana’s winter sports scene, skijoring – the practice of pulling a skier with a horse or other animal – is actually thousands of years old.
According to the International Skiing History Association, the word skijoring comes from a Norwegian word that means (roughly translated) ski driving. Rock art found in Scandinavia appears to show humans skiing being pulled by elk and reindeer, said to date back to the year 5 A.D. A writer in the Altai Mountains of central Asia described skijoring around 1200 A.D.