Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Culture

Finding Adventure at the GoPro Mountain Games

By

Summer mountain getaways are without a doubt our favorite vacations. Add in a crowd of adrenaline junkies, world class athletic competitions, a nightly concert series, and huge gear village, and you’ve got the makings of a trip you’ll tell stories about for years to come. There’s only one place that puts all of these elements of adventure together seamlessly, and that is the GoPro Mountain Games in Vail, Colorado. We were on the ground (and in the air and water) this year to get a taste of the very best experiences Vail has to offer.
Mountain Games Slack Line

Related: 5 Best Mountain Town Adventures | Best Mountain Town Bars

Recommended Videos

Primarily, the Games are a celebration of all our favorite mountain sports; this year featured an enduro mountain biking race, world cup bouldering, rafting, kayaking and SUP events, and more. We were in town to get some instruction on how to better use our GoPro cameras in adventure settings, so we hit the water for a run down Gore Creek.
Mountain Games Kayaking

Related: 
Upgrade your daily routine with the best smartwatches for men

For serious paddlers, the class III rapids featured on the stretch of river around Vail Village are pretty trivial. However, for our novice skills, and the open top kayaks we were riding in they proved more than enough danger and excitement. Our guides fished us out of a couple dips in the river, and we paddled on. After our down river sprint, we took our GoPros off the kayak and helmet mounts to check the footage, and get a crash course in a recent acquisition, the Quik App. With a built in music library and smart editor, even a novice can put together a professional edit of their adventures in just a few minutes. It took us about five minutes to pull a few video segments from the river together and order them to tell a coherent story. Quik did the rest:

Gore Creek Kayaking

Of course, the Games is not all about high stakes, adrenaline fueled, extreme sports. After getting dried off and warmed up (Gore Creek was running at a frosty 44-degrees), we headed over to the Dock Dogs competition with famed photographer, Travis Burke, one of GoPro’s premier ambassadors. These high flying canines were the perfect subjects to show off the slow motion capture and burst shot capabilities. Shooting up to thirty photos a second, the Hero 4 Silver ($400) caught every highlight of the action as serious athletic shepherds, labs, and malinois took flight in front of the crowd. The slow motion capture – up to 120-frames-per-second at 720p resolution – helped catch every jump, catch, and splash. We’ll be taking one along for our big Pacific Northwest trip later this summer, so stay tuned for some tips and tricks as we start to perfect our video skills.
Mountain Games Dock Dogs

Whether you’re on the hunt for your next high altitude single track, looking to make your first splash on a SUP or kayak, or just want to take it all in, the Mountain Games are the capital of adventure sports every summer. If you missed it this time around, it’s time to get a jump start on planning your perfect GoPro fueled adventure next summer.

Day 2 Highlights | GoPro Mountain Games

Cover photo Courtesy of GoPro/Logan Robertson
Austin Parker
Austin Parker
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Austin Parker is a former contributor at The Manual Parker is a powder skier and sport climber and is no stranger hauling…
Topics

Editors’ Recommendations

10 cigar myths the internet won’t let die
The cigar 'facts' shared in every lounge that are actually complete BS
two men enjoying cigars

The internet has been such an asset to the cigar world. It allows us to look up obscure brands, communicate with fellow fans across the globe, and access a greater amount of information than ever before. There's a downside, though: rumors catch on like wildfire, and once they're out there, they're nearly impossible to get rid of.Visit any cigar lounge or read online forums, and you'll find the same tired myths that have been making the rounds for decades. While a few are harmless pieces of folklore, others are robbing you of your hard-earned cash, ruining your smoking experience, or just flat-out lying to you about health hazards.Let's burn down those stubborn misconceptions once and for all.

Myth #1: Darker (Maduro) cigars are always more powerful

Read more
Cigar etiquette 101: Dos, don’ts, and modern manners
Please don't be that guy. Here are the cigar etiquette mistakes that scream 'amateur'
well-dressed guy smoking on a couch in the dark

Walking into a cigar lounge for the first time feels like crashing somebody's secret club. They've got this unspoken language, weird rituals, and enough unwritten rules to make your head spin! But here’s the thing—cigar etiquette is not some gatekeeping nonsense to try to make you look dumb. It's about respecting the process, the experience, and not being the person who ruins everyone else's vibe.Whether you're new to this or have been faking for years, this guide will sort you out because there's nothing more likely to ruin a good smoke than someone who clearly has no idea what they're doing.

The basics: Respecting the ritual

Read more
The first movie from Materialists director Celine Song just found a new streaming home
The movie is a brilliant look at the roads not taken.
The cast of Past Lives

Few directors have a debut feature that's as splashy as Celine Song's. The director, who now has Materialists in theaters, had a breakout hit at Sundance called Past Lives that took her all the way to the Oscars. Now that Materialists is in theaters and doing quite well, you might want to catch up with Past Lives, which was one of the best movies of 2023.

The film stars Greta Lee and is told in episodes that span more than 20 years. It starts in South Korea, and follows two Korean children who are clearly close friends and may even have a romantic spark as one of them prepares to move to Canada. Then, we follow their story over decades as they come into and out of each other's lives until they're both in their mid-30s and they reunite for a day in New York City.

Read more