Soldier Hollow hosting national cross-country skiing event for visually, mobile-impaired adults
- Deborah Impiazzi, left, and her guide Joleen Widmark, right, ski down a hill at Soldier Hollow on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, in Midway.
- Lilly Holloway, right, and her guide Joan Holcomb, left, pose for a photo on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, at Soldier Hollow in Midway.
- Stansbury Park resident John Paxman, left, and his guide Wayne Monsen ski on the tracks at Soldier Hollow on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, in Midway.
Lily Holloway started out strong in her first time on cross-country skis Monday at Soldier Hollow.
The Australian and new participant of Ski for Light — a weeklong event where adults with visual impairments learn how to cross-country ski — gained early confidence on the ski track with the help of her guide, Joan Holcomb.
The moment she deviated from the track, though, her confidence waned, and she took a tumble into the groomed Midway snow.
Holloway was fine, but her mobile device sent out an alert.
“My phone started going ‘weee wooo weee wooo,'” she said. “Next minute I heard my phone telling an emergency operator, ‘User has had a serious fall.'”
After assuring the 911 operator she was fine and keeping an ambulance from hauling up the hill, Holloway couldn’t help but laugh about it.
“Someone said, ‘You just saved yourself $1,000,'” Holloway joked.
Many Ski for Light participants, some of whom are blind, or, like Holloway, have limited vision, will admit learning to cross-country ski is a challenge.
But the nonprofit annual event that takes place around the U.S. and is in Utah for the first time since 2012 is a place where visually-impaired individuals, and some mobile-impaired people, can learn a new skill in a comfortable environment.
“I’m here on my own but I’ve never felt alone,” Holloway said. “It’s just been so supportive. As a visually impaired person, to have people who get it, and what I mean by get it is to get vision impairment and understand how you need to be supported, I can’t tell you the anxiety that takes away from you.”
The idea of teaching blind individuals to cross-country ski began in the 1950s with a Norwegian man named Erling Stordahl. That led to the start of a cross-country skiing event called the Ridderrenn in 1964 in Norway.
The United States iteration of Ridderenn, Ski for Light, was started in 1975 by Olav Pedersen, a Colorado ski instructor and Norwegian immigrant.
Celebrating its 50th year, Ski for Light has grown to be a tight-knit community, where several participants and guides alike go to the weeklong event every year, no matter its location.
Each Ski for Light participant is given a guide with whom they work with throughout the week leading up to a race at the end.
“There’s two sets of tracks when they’re skiing, and the guides are in one set of the tracks, the skiers in the other set of the tracks,” said Marie Huston, a Ski for Light director from Grand Junction, Colorado. “And there’s a lot of communication on the ski trails between the guide and the skier. So they really developed this amazing partnership, working together. You ski with the same person the entire week, and then it’s cultivated at the end of that week with a race/rally.”
This week, there are 281 attendees, which include 112 visually impaired participants, three mobile impaired participants, 131 ski instructors and 34 other volunteers.
Most of them stay at the Marriott in Provo, then drive up Provo Canyon to ski each day.
They come from eight countries: the U.S., Canada, England, Denmark, Germany, Norway, China and Australia.
Thirty-eight states are represented, including Utah, which is represented by one visually impaired participant, John Paxman, and eight guides this year.
Paxman, a Stansbury Park resident, has been attending the event the past 15 years. While he also enjoys skiing at Solitude, he said cross-country skiing has a certain allure.
“You’re out in the forest and it’s quiet and there’s not a million people trying to run over you like there is on the slopes,” Paxman said. “And I don’t have to pay a fortune for a lift to get my butt up the mountain.”
Joleen Widmark, of Logan, is a 10-time Ski for Light instructor and can’t help but keep coming back.
“It’s really the community of people and the comradery with everyone,” she said. “It feels like a family but you feel like you get to enjoy the mountains, the skiing and new best friends.”
Widmark’s student for the week is Deborah Impiazzi, a blind English woman who has been going to Ski for Light events for seven years. She said she got into skiing 17 years ago.
“I woke up one morning and thought, ‘There needs to be more to life than this.’ We don’t have much snow in England. And I went onto the computer and put in ‘blind skiing’ and it came up with venetian blinds, vertical blinds, every blind you can think of,” she joked.
Impiazzi continued her search, however, and found the group in Norway first. One door led to the next and now she attends the United States event annually.
Her opinion of Ski for Light seems to reflect the masses.
“People see you and they come and help you and they ask where you want to go … Everybody has time for you,” Impiazzi said. “It’s just a wonderful event and cross-country skiing is just amazing.”