"Watch out, biathlon! Eat my shorts, big air! Get bent, Nordic combined! There's a new skiing-centric Winter Olympics sport in town, and it's awesomely outrageous in ways that you old-timers just can't match. So you think downhill skiing is where it's at? OK, boomer. What about a sport that features downhill skiing and uphill skiing? That's right: Prepare to get rizzed up by the lit new Olympic sport known as ski mountaineering-but the cool kids just call it skimo. Skimo! Skimo! Skimo!"
"So these skins are basically like condoms for your skis? As I was saying,skimo, which is also known as rando racing, can also trace its origins in part to the pastime of mountain hiking and the ski-area tradition of bootpacking. As that rousing video from the International Ski Mountaineering Federation makes clear, skimo is a sport that celebrates Alpinism in its totality and harks back to a day when the ski lift was hardly a gleam in Robert Winterhalder's eye."
Ski mountaineering, commonly called skimo or rando racing, combines uphill skinning and downhill skiing in endurance races that require rapid transitions and technical mountaineering skills. The sport traces origins to Alpine military patrols, French randonnée (Alpine touring), mountain hiking, and the ski-area tradition of bootpacking. Competitors use climbing skins on skis for uphill traction, lightweight equipment for ascents, and robust skis for descents, emphasizing efficiency and speed. International federations have promoted skimo globally, and the discipline emphasizes full-spectrum Alpinism, endurance, route-finding, avalanche awareness, and a youthful, extreme-sport appeal that contributed to Olympic inclusion.
Read at Slate Magazine
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