Hali Hafeman was once a little girl glued to the TV, mesmerized by her idols skiing to Olympic glory. 

“One of the earliest dreams I can remember having was wanting to make the USA ski team for freestyle mogul skiing,” she said from her home near Evergreen. “I never came close to that.” 

Life took her to college and a career and new interests when it came to skiing: She fell in love with the backcountry, where she discovered a new competitive world that swapped manicured courses with untouched wilds, that valued uphill speed as much as downhill. Ski mountaineering had been taking off across the West, joining an international trend and catching the attention of Olympic organizers. 

“So when I was turning 30 and I realized I had another opportunity to make a national team in ski mountaineering, that was super exciting,” Hafeman said. 

Yes, for her and other Coloradans, an Olympic dream has been reborn.

Ski mountaineering is making its debut at the 2026 Winter Olympics, and Hafeman has been among national team members from this state vying to represent in Milano Cortina. They have vied against the odds over the past year. With very limited spots made available for the sport’s first year, the qualification process has favored European nations where ski mountaineering is far more culturally engrained.

“Really it comes down to Canada vs. the U.S.,” explained Sarah Cookler, the Utah-based head of sport for the U.S. Ski Mountaineering Association.

Come Dec. 6-7 at Solitude Mountain Resort in Utah, men and women from both countries will race for a chance to represent North America at the Winter Games in February. Before then, this weekend, Cookler expects seven men and eight women — mostly from Colorado and Utah — at a training camp that will decide who gets to compete at Solitude. 

Summit County’s Arthur Whitehead is one of those hopefuls. He’s been one recently seen charging uphill at Arapahoe Basin in the early morning hours before lift service — among local traditions around Colorado that have helped popularize ski mountaineering, otherwise known as skimo. 

“When I first started, you had maybe a handful of people out here, and pretty quickly you met everyone and knew everyone,” Whitehead said. “Whereas now, I was out yesterday morning at A-Basin, and even with super early season and super limited terrain, there were probably 150 people skinning up.”

Skinning up with skins that provide uphill traction rather than riding the lift. More and more Coloradans have been earning turns this way. And beyond A-Basin, Aspen, Winter Park and several other ski resorts that have allowed uphill access over the years, more and more skiers have been drawn to the backcountry. 

That was especially the case during the COVID-19 pandemic, when alpine touring gear sales suggested a shift. For Cam Smith, the allure came earlier — about 10 years ago after he moved to Gunnison to attend Western Colorado University.

“It was just being able to access places in the winter that feel like places you shouldn’t be able to get to,” said Smith, now living in Crested Butte. “You could hike and climb up these summits in the winter and make your own path, and then you get to the top and you get to ski down instead of walking. It was a really cool way to move. And it was like the outdoors opened up at a time when normally people are confined to resorts or groomed Nordic trails.” 

And, it turned out, there were races that celebrated this mode of travel — such as the Grand Traverse. Smith would go on to claim a course record across those 40 miles through the Elk Mountains between Crested Butte and Aspen. This was while competing internationally at the highest levels of skimo competition.

Smith’s more recent performances on the World Cup circuit have turned heads as much as his long red hair and beard. Some onlookers have seen him, along with relay teammate Jessie Young of Aspen, as Team USA’s best shot at an Olympic bid. 

The two had longed for skimo’s day on the sporting world’s greatest stage. Though, upon learning of the Olympic format, Smith admits to being “disappointed at first.” 

There was “a little bit of grumbling among the international community,” said Cookler, with the U.S. Ski Mountaineering Association. “It certainly is a variation of the sport.” 

The Winter Games will feature a men’s and women’s sprint, in which one will ascend with skis and skins on, then quickly remove them and stash them in a backpack for another ascent on foot before clicking back into skis for the descent to the finish. In the relay, teams of men and women will tag each other in a similar course. 

The courses require minutes and hundreds of feet of elevation — as opposed to classic ski mountaineering that might demand many hours and thousands of feet over rugged terrain. 

“So instead of climbing up a rocky ridge to a summit and skiing down, it’s like making it as fast and precise and high performing as possible, which is really cool in its own way,” Smith said. “It’s not natural and wild, which is what the sport is in essence, but it’s the athletic pinnacle of that.” 

It will make for a “good show,” he said. And he hopes the show comes with a proper backdrop. 

“Like, this is the Olympic discipline that represents the roots of skiing,” Smith said. “This is how people skied before chairlifts, this is how people got around and hunted and traveled and sustained themselves — human-powered skiing and climbing up the mountains and skiing back down.” 

The sport as we know it now was “inspired by the need to traverse the snow-covered landscapes of Europe in prehistoric times,” reads a primer on Team USA’s website, which mentions another inspiration: A German regarded as an alpine skiing pioneer, Wilhelm Paulcke, skied across the formidable Bernese Highlands in 1897. 

Soldiers traveled on skis long before World War II and the famed 10th Mountain Division, which trained in the high country around Leadville in preparation for battle in the Alps. Before then, in 1924, an Olympic event called military patrol debuted at the Winter Games in Chamonix, France. Those rifle-touting skiers preceded today’s biathlon, which combines cross-country skiing and target shooting. 

In contrast, ski mountaineering will pose more of an uphill and downhill challenge. And there will be a technical challenge pertaining to “transitions,” those moments for changing in and out of skis and skins. In races determined by tenths of a second, those moments matter.

“Those transitions where you’re switching from one mode of travel to the other, I think that totals about 25 to 30 percent of your total race times,” said Whitehead, who often practices with the gear in his Frisco home. “So while physical fitness is huge, there’s a lot riding on how quick you can do those technical skills as well.” 

And perhaps that’s fitting for an event showcasing the sport, considering how essential that gear has been to the sport’s growth. 

For its American growth, Cookler credits Colorado for uphill access at resorts that is not entirely common across the industry. And she credits Colorado for races that have become iconic, such as the Grand Traverse and Aspen’s Power of Four. “Those races sell out in a day or maybe less,” Cookler said. 

Another iconic race she started around her home mountains, the Wasatch Powderkeg, drew between 100 and 150 skiers five years ago, she recalled. “That was one of the biggest races in the country,” she said. “Now we sell out at 350 racers.” 

Cookler also started a skimo youth club, Silverfork, that is regarded as the largest in the country. Smith has seen it spark a movement. 

“I think the thing that’s night and day different between now and 10 years ago are the youth programs,” he said. 

Ten years ago, he met skimo racers like him who saw a wintertime endurance test to meet their passions for trail running and cycling. Now “kids are growing up doing the sport,” Smith said. “It’s not like they’re cross-country skiing and getting into it, or mountain biking and getting into it. Kids are growing up doing skimo.” 

Maybe one day they’ll catch up to the steepest competition in Europe. 

“I think internationally they look at us as a country relatively new to the sport, which is true,” said Hafeman, the national team member near Evergreen. “But I think that we’re learning very quickly.” 

Learning and dreaming — like that little girl again watching the Olympics. 

Yes, for Hafeman and others, skimo has somehow returned them to their childhood. 

“It’s pretty common amongst us, this sort of revival of a dream that maybe died when we were still pretty young,” Whitehead said. “To have that come back to life as adults, it’s pretty amazing.”