Vail – “If you had to describe this whole scene: It’s hugs, not handshakes. It’s a sparkle, not a stare. It’s a smile, not a dimple.”
That’s how Ted DeLaVergne, father of the recently lost paddle king Daniel DeLaVergne, described the family of outdoor players who gathered last week for the Teva Mountain Games.
The pinnacle of the four-day bacchanal of climbing, kayaking, running and riding was Saturday night’s Everest Awards. In only its second year, the award ceremony delivers heartfelt attaboys to the world’s best and often most obscure athletes who toil beneath the mainstream radar while pursuing their passion.
The 10 men and women stars honored Saturday are innovators in their sports. They are the adventurers who lure newcomers by uncovering new pinnacles in climbing, adventure racing, kayaking, biking and trail running.
They are the soul of their sports, the mud-caked heroes whose antics inspire countless others to push further and play harder in search of spirit-swelling moments in the outdoors.
“All I can hope is that I inspire,” said Breckenridge’s Monique Merrell, the female adventure racing Everest Award winner. “The flowers are out there. So get outside.”
Billy Mattison, the 48-year-old Eagle Valley’s veteran adventure racer and punishing course designer, won the men’s award.
“I’ve been very lucky all my life,” Mattison said. “All I wanted to do was climb, kayak and ski, and a sport comes along that allows me to do all of them.”
Hannah Hannah – yes, the 22-year-old Hannah Steffans recently married a fella with the last name Hannah – took the women’s bike honors. Hannah, from Buena Vista, is known as the first woman to throw backflips on a bike, and her trickster prowess is establishing new definitions of what can be done on a bicycle.
“Little did we realize how far the nature of this sport would progress,” said Durango’s Ned Overend, the cycling legend, who, at 50, won Saturday’s 9.7-mile road bike hill climb up Vail Pass and that night took home the cycling Everest Award.
The men’s climbing award went to 19-year-old Jason Kehl, whose graceful dances up overhung stone have set a new standard for bouldering. The women’s climbing award went to CU student Emily Harrington, whose recent ascent of the ridiculously steep Zulu route in Rifle Canyon makes her the first woman to climb 5.14a.
The trail running Everest Award paired Manitou Springs super-runner Matt Carpenter with Colorado Springs career off-road racer Nancy Hobbs. The two had clashed earlier when Carpenter’s dominant performance in Saturday’s national 10K trail running championships on Vail Mountain was not acknowledged by running’s governing body, USA Track & Field, because he refused to pay an extra registration fee to the organization. Carpenter, 41, missed out on $1,000 in his principled stance against the organization. Hobbs represents the USATF’s trail running council.
“They can’t take away the fact we won. They can’t take away the fact that we try,” Carpenter said in his short acceptance speech.
Boulder paddler and three-time Olympian Scott Shipley won the men’s kayaking award, and Olympic slalom paddler Rebecca Giddens won the women’s kayaking award.
“Kayaking has given me my life,” Giddens said. “It’s given me the opportunity of a lifetime, and it’s given me the ability to believe that dreams do come true.”
Megahiker Andrew Skurka, 24, won the expedition of the year award for his sea-to-sea, 7,778-mile, 339-day hike across North America last year. Today, Skurka begins a short, 1,550-mile stroll along California’s Pacific Crest Trail. His father, dropping him off at the airport for the quick trip to Vail for the Everest Awards ceremony, asked him if he planned to get a real job after the Pacific Crest.
“I said, ‘Maybe someday, Dad,”‘ Skurka said.
Let’s hope not too soon.
Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
