By Lauren Glendenning (courtesy Vail Daily)
The word of the day heard around Gore Creek in Vail, Colo., on Sunday at the GoPro Mountain Games was “carnage.” That’s because there was tons of it. From 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., rafters, stand-up paddlers and kayakers just tried to make it to the finish line without suffering too much carnage.
Many succeeded, and plenty of others will have some nice bruises to show off to their friends and family members in the coming days.
It all began with the raft cross event, which compared to what followed, was relatively tame. Two-person teams paddled from the Covered Bridge to the International Bridge — the same stretch of water used for all three of Sunday’s final water events — racing other boats and trying to make it around gates in the water.
“It was furious, man,” competitor Mongo Reeder said. “You’ve got to come out of the hole hot — a lot of the race is right up here at the beginning.
Reeder talked about his win with his teammate Crash Cobb while sipping on a beer — a beer that someone handed to him from the river bank while they were still racing.
Cobb joked that the event used to give points for style, but not anymore. “We still provide the style,” he said.
A few minutes later, the carnage intensified with the stand-up paddle surf cross event. Like the raft cross, the competitors enter the water at the same time and try to make it to the finish line. The stand-up paddlers seemed to struggle a lot more with the obstacles in the river, though.
“It’s definitely chaos,” competitor Peter Hall said. “It’s like three people trying to fit through a space wide enough for one person, and it’s everybody pushing and trying to make sure they’re the one in that space. And if you’re not, you’re trying to knock someone else out to get in there. It’s just hectic.”
