Skiers and snowboarders headed to A-Basin this weekend for their last late-season lines will be amused by the roof-rack loads of their fellow adventurers heading farther up I-70 toward Vail: Some of them will be carrying surfboards. Yes, surfboards.
Twenty years after the debut of the Vail Valley Foundation's Memorial Day whitewater festival, now known as the Teva Mountain Games, a new breed of splashers are standing up for their right to paddle in the Class III rapids of the appropriately named Gore Creek. "We're expecting a little bit of carnage in the new Stand Up Paddling events," says Shelley Woodworth, a spokeswoman for the Vail Valley Foundation. "The SUP Surf Sprint on Saturday is a three-mile time-trial race, and the SUP Surf Cross on Sunday is going to be all-out, every-man-and-woman-for-themselves mayhem.
The games, which run today through Sunday, also feature kayaking, rafting, mountain biking, road cycling, bouldering, climbing, dog sports, fly fishing, trail running, and half marathon events, pitting world-class athletes against weekend warriors.
"The games have come to embody the whole mountain lifestyle," Woodworth says. For registration and more information, visit www.TevaMountainGames.com.
June 3-6, 2010