Solitude is Utah’s skimo hub. Will it host the sport in the 2034 Olympics?

Like a rainbow ribbon, athletes in colorful, skin-tight suits fluttered up and down a ski hill at Solitude Mountain Resort in early December during a ski mountaineering World Cup race. In an all-out sprint that lasted barely three minutes, they climbed the steep, spectator-lined hill in their skis or, at times, just in their ski boots. At the top, they ripped the climbing skins off the bottom of their skis and schussed downhill as fast as possible.

For many, Olympic berths were on the line — including, potentially, one for Solitude.

Ski mountaineering, better known as skimo, will make its Olympic debut Thursday at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Games, becoming the first sport added to the Winter Games since 2002. Though skimo was included in Italy as a one-off, French Alps 2030 is expected to add the sport to its program. Now, local and international sport officials are lobbying for its addition to the Utah 2034 Olympics — especially since Utah is considered the epicenter of the sport in the United States.

If Utah is skimo’s American birthplace, then Solitude is its nursery. For decades, the ski area has been the go-to venue for local and international races alike. So, in the event Utah 2034 organizers add the sport, will they make Solitude its Olympic venue?

Or, might they take the “mountaineering” out of skimo and bring it closer to the city?

Staging it at Solitude would make sense, said John Allison, a board member and past president of the nonprofit Utah Skimo, which promotes the sport in the state.

“Almost all the major U.S. events in Utah have been hosted at Solitude,” he said. “They love the sport, and they’re very supportive.”

The decision would depend on multiple factors: Will it just be a sprint event, as it is now, or will a more traditional, two-hour race be added? Will the skimo federation set an elevation cap for venues so athletes don’t burn out their lungs quicker than their legs? And, the $100 million question: Will there be snow in 2034?

Cottonwood Canyons have ‘challenges’

During the World Cup race — the first International Ski Mountaineering Federation event held on U.S. soil — Solitude showed it can handle a wide array of conditions. Days before the event, the race venue behind Solitude Village was completely bare. The resort brought in snow guns from Brighton and Deer Valley Resort and added them to its own fleet to ensure a sufficient base. Then, the day before the race, a storm dropped nearly a foot of snow. Volunteers had to shovel the slope and sideslip over it to help pack it down.

Sarah Cookler, USA Skimo’s head of sport and the coach of the Silverfork Skimo team in Big Cottonwood Canyon, said feedback was nonetheless positive.

“The course is fantastic,” agreed Canadian Emma Cook-Clarke, a four-time Canadian women’s national champion who placed eighth in December’s Solitude race.

Just because Solitude can — and has — hosted world-class skimo races, doesn’t mean it will get the nod in 2034. In fact, local organizers have specifically ruled out any of the ski areas in Cottonwood Canyons as venue sites. Oftentimes the two-lane roads in and out of those canyons are already clogged with skiers and snowboarders heading to or from the resorts. The Utah Department of Transportation has said it will begin implementing traffic-taming measures starting next winter. Yet tolling and increased busing wouldn’t do much against Olympic-level traffic.

Plus, there’s the matter of safety. Both canyons have just one way in and out during the winter, which complicates evacuations and emergency response.

“There are all kinds of challenges with the Cottonwood Canyons in terms of ingress and egress,” said Fraser Bullock, president and executive chair of Utah 2034. “So we have elected not to have competitions require driving up and down the Cottonwood Canyons.”

So if not at Solitude, where else could the rogue event land?

Take skimo to the Town Lift?

Allison said any of Utah’s ski areas could host the sprint event, which is what is being featured in Italy.

In the sprint, heats of five athletes race to complete a single lap of a course. They start with a near-heart-exploding uphill dash that combines skiing and running in ski boots (also known as boot packing). They finish with a fast-paced downhill ski that often features small jumps and racing gates. The top two in each heat continue to advance and race until a winner is determined.

The course in Bormio — where Wyoming’s Anna Gibson and Colorado’s Cam Smith will represent Team USA — has a 230-foot vertical and sits at an elevation of about 4,000 feet.

By comparison, Solitude’s base elevation is near 8,000 feet. The lowest base elevation of the ski resorts flagged as likely venues for alpine events in the the 2034 Winter Games, meanwhile, is about 6,500 feet —Deer Valley and Snowbasin Resort.

That could be an issue.

“The course in Italy, I think, will be easier for the altitude part,” said Giulia Murada of Italy after she placed second in the women’s race at the Solitude World Cup. “I’m suffering a bit. I’ve been training in attitude to get ready for this, but I didn’t expect it to be so hard here.”

Bullock said that is something Utah 2034 organizers have considered.

“The nice thing about skimo is it has a fairly small footprint,” he said, “and we’ve already looked at it that it could fit in several of our outdoor venues.”

Allison said organizers could really get creative. What about the base of Town Lift in Park City? Or in the foothills around the Utah Capitol? It could be a completely urban race that starts and finishes at the 9th and 9th whale.

“Some of them are in town, depending on the venue, and, like, the crowds are so deep,” he said. “And there’s tons of cowbells, and there’s tons of drinking and partying and people singing. It’s such an intense, little, compact area.”

Cooke-Clarke, the Canadian racer, said she would like to see an urban race because it could bring more people, and more eyes, to skimo.

“These short disciplines, especially, you don’t need that much. And I think that’s the whole point — well, part of the point — is that it is then more accessible,” she said. “If you can have these events close to the large city centers, more people can get into it. Kids of a young age could just take a bus, as opposed to having to drive an hour up a windy road.”

Long-distance call

The drawback — as has become abundantly clear this winter — is that those areas aren’t guaranteed to have snow.

Bullock said 2034’s sports program will not be announced until at least 2027. When it is, the snow factor will be taken into account in determining all outdoor venues. He pointed out that because skimo is an Olympic sport, not a Paralympic sport, it would be held in the more snow-reiliable month of February.

Not everyone likes the idea, though. Griffin Briley, a Team USA standout from Park City who just missed the Olympic cut, said skimo in an urban setting cuts against the fabric of the sport.

“I believe that would not be a good choice,” he said. “Skimo is meant for the mountains. It’s not meant for a city. Even if it might be hard to spectate.

“Technology is so great, and by then it will be better, so that we can really show off the beauty of what’s around us, not just in the foothills — and maybe inspire people to get out in it and respect it.”

An option that may be ‘perfect’

Briley is one of the many racers and race organizers campaigning for Utah 2034 organizers to not only bring in skimo sprint races, but to add the more-traditional long-distance races to the program. Those races are the most historically popular in both the U.S. and Europe, according to USA Skimo. However, they stretch over roughly two hours and include around 4,000 feet of elevation gain.

Their inclusion would make selecting a skimo venue exponentially more complicated. Still, Allison said, a few options exist.

One is obvious: Bring the races back to Solitude. It already has courses and know-how, and it will most likely be able to make sufficient snow.

But there’s another option, one that is an established Olympic venue. It can provide a variety of loops that will entertain an in-person crowd while also boasting the kind of scenic ridgeline that Allison believes will keep audiences tuned to the TV broadcasts.

It’s Snowbasin, one of the outdoor Olympic venues with the lowest base elevation.

That’s all Murada needed to hear. The Italian racer who is favored to win a medal on her home course in Bormio said after the Solitude World Cup that she wasn’t sure if she would be too old to compete by 2034.

“Perfect,” she said upon hearing about the lower elevation. “I will be there for sure.”