The last weekend in May I went to the Teva Mountain Games in Vail. The town of Vail transforms into a sports mecca with events held all over the streets (and rivers); stupidly fit (or beautifully fit) people are everywhere. Athletes from all over the country come to compete in strenuous competitions for little more than recognition and well, competition.
It takes me a bit to get situated, the layout of the games is pretty spread out. To get from the climbing to the Kayaking areas is quite a hike.
The cross country mountain bike races take off and I wonder up the mountain to find a great vantage to shoot. The riders do a few laps around the course gaining and losing thousands of feet of vertical.
One of the difficult things about the Mountain games is that multiple events are going at the same time. It is impossible to be at all of them. I leave the cross country mountain bike race and wonder through town to find these bikers practicing for their race through the streets. Moments after this shot the sky let loose, drowning out many of the events for a couple of hours.
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| Alex Puccio |
The climbing area is under a protected stage and so the semi-finals continue. Here, Alex Puccio sends her problem that gets her to the finals.
This year the water was so low in the creek that they had to “create” rapids and try to control the flow of the creek. But people still had fun. In this sport called Kayak Cross, which is a kayak race mixed with American Gladiators, competitors race each other down the river and battle with “8 Ball” kayakers ro reach the finish. Even without quality rapids, this is a lot of fun to watch. I’d imagine it would be a lot of fun to participate in until you get a bow of a kayak in your teeth.
This guy showed the crowd the proper way to float down a river if you ever left your boat.
The two-man rafts had to race both the clock and another team, going around obstacles to reach the end.
One of the many highlights of the Teva Mountain Games was the Gibbon Games, a slackline trick competition. Competitors bounced, flipped, stalled and twisted their way to pleasing the judges and the cheering crowd. It’s quite impressive to see people do flips on a two inch slackline that us normal ones can’t do on solid ground. One of the best tricksters in the world is 14 yr old Alex Mason from California. He might be a little small for his age, but knows how to command a crowd. And a slackline.
Mike Payton, from Colorado, is ranked #4 in the world and has won several world championships.
FiveTen is a huge supporter of the sport and makes shoes specifically for it.
The Games were a blast. Plenty of parties, plenty of music and entertainment, and plenty of shwag. And I got to see a lot of my friends compete and can’t wait to go back to the Winter Games in February.
I’m trying to catch up on posts…I am WAAAYY behind. I have a lot of content to share. Till then.