Good, cold fun

For the first time in its five-year history, the Sundance Winter Festival was not blessed with sunshine or unusually warm temperatures on Saturday. Of course, that did little to dampen the spirits of the crowds who lined the streets determined to follow the commentators' advice to make sure they didn't go home that night hungry or sober.

The crowd may have been smaller and the temperatures low, but the atmosphere was as festive as ever as revelers came from far and near to watch the ski joring and bar stool races. The first horse and skier partnership raced down the course at 9 a.m., but the anticipation had already been building for several days.

As anyone who walked down Main Street during the week could see, the city and volunteers started preparing the festival area earlier than usual this year. On Thursday morning, the trucks began their mission to dump piles of snow up to nine feet high along the road, ready to be flattened and smoothed into a ski joring course with several jumps and a hoop rack.

The reason for the early road closures, said Public Works Director Mac Erickson, was to allow the teams to spread the snow from one side of the course to the other. In previous years, the snow had been placed in the center of the street and the roads kept open through Friday but, said Erickson, this meant there was never quite enough compaction down the middle of the course.

Though there were still a fair few tumbles among the skiers (one of whom made the sensible decision to forego the jumps on his next run and simply drink a beer and wave to the crowd as he sailed along the snow), the track appeared to hold firm throughout the day.

The course was also experienced by a number of intrepid souls who didn't arrive in town on Saturday morning with a horse or a set of skis. The tube races kept the crowd entertained between the ski joring rounds – and, this year, it became a point of pride for some to sail over the jumps along the way (with varying degrees of success).

An estimated 270 people took time out from the Calcutta bidding, races and good food to visit the first Sundance Winter Festival art show, located in the Sundance State Bank meeting room. Various local artists were on hand to discuss their works or, in the case of Bruce Speidel, make the most of the relative peace and quiet to create a whole new one.

RESULTS

Open (16 teams)

1st Jeff Stull and Josh Kammerer

2nd Nick McDonald and Jeff Stull

3rd Burt Reno and Joel Wilson

4th Randy Greer and George Cartwright

Young Guns (14 teams)

1st – Nick McDonald and Jeff Stull

2nd – Jack Greer and George Cartwright

3rd – Randy Greer and George Cartwright

Classic Guns (7 teams)

1st – Sarah Barton and Tony Barton

2nd – Amy Goodson and Josh Kammerer

Girly Guns (3 teams)

1st – Callie Keahey and Shannon Gaylord

Outlaw Boarders (6 teams)

1st – Josh Pierce and Connor Eaton

2nd – Amy Goodson and Micheal Rodriguez