City Desk

Snöflinga Winter Festival 2020

ButteNews.net
Diane Larson

 
This year, 2020 marks the 5^th annual winter festival in Butte that is known as Snöflinga. In Swedish snöflinga means ‘snowflake.’

Snöflinga is the brain child of some of Butte’s winter enthusiasts who wanted to share their love of winter and encourage people to get out and enjoy all that the winter has to offer, our mountains, extensive trail system and all that we have right in our backyard. In their words from the Snöflinga web site, “get outside, be active, enjoy winter, celebrate community.”

“The goal is getting the community together to promote healthy activities for the whole community, especially our youth,” says Jamie Ritter of Snöflinga.

Jamie went on to explain the long-term wishes for this winter festival. “Long-term, we want to expand it into multiple events, spread out through the winter. We’d like to show other communities around the state that Butte is definitely a winter location. But more than anything we want to bring everyone together and show that there are winter events for everybody.”

The winter recreation opportunities for the 2020 Snöflinga include: cross-country skiing, ice skating, fat tire biking, trail running, curling, speed skating, to name just a few. With many chances for competition, there are lessons to take and entertaining events to watch.

There is a large committee of people that work on this winter festival and each event has a leader, explains Jamie. “The kids’ day has been expanded, making sure we have events whether or not there is snow”, says Jamie. The Kids day of Winter Fun be at Stodden Park. There will be new activities to enjoy. The kid’s day is free and “any kid who comes to our kid day will get a free ride on the carousel,” said Jamie.

New this year is an ice climbing demonstration at the Original.

A triathlon style event will run through the festival and end with the crowning of the king and queen of Snoflinga.

Some of the events happening this year include a fat tire race, Nordic ski race and a running race. There will also be, weather permitting, skijoring. This is an event “where you have a horse and a skier pair. You have one teammate riding the horse, pulling a skier,” says Jamie. They must maneuver around, across and through different banked corners and jumps, “and the goal it to get through the course as quickly as possible,” she said.

There are many opportunities for sponsorships for local and national organizations, as well as your tax-deductible contribution, anything and all helps keep these fun activities going.

If interested in becoming a sponsor at any level please contact Krissy Kraczkowsky at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

2020 Snöflinga schedule of events can be found at snoflinga.weebly.com/2020eventschedule.html.