5:55 p.m.
Admittedly, many Snowdown challenges don’t require much skill. It takes, however, a riddle-solver and treasure hunter to find the Silver Bullet, an annual scavenger hunt that began in 1997.
A series of clues, broadcasted in the days leading up to the Saturday deadline, led the winners to the mailbox at the Rochester Hotel at East Second Avenue.
For the first time, teammates Kayce Chadborn, his mother, Barb Richter, and friend, Chris Leeper, spotted the bullet after seven years of never finding it.
“It’s addicting ... maddening,” said Chadborn, who was the one to find the bullet around 6:55 p.m. on Thursday. “When another team is looking, you know. They’re acting really weird and trying not to look at each other.”
The three collected their $250 cash prize, but Chadborn had his doubts that the money would last to Sunday.
2:59 p.m.
Away from the cacophony of Main Street, divers took a plunge at the Durango Rec Center to see how they’d fare in an underwater obstacle course.
For the fifth year, Splash Down Diving hosted seminars for children and adults to introduce new divers to the skill, and let them take a crack at “Indiana Jones’ Underwater Labyrinth.”
Certified instructors and novices had to make their way through a tunnel, avoid entanglement in a “kelp forest” and get past other barriers, all while holding a pingpong ball on a spoon. It’s a challenge – which is why cheating is encouraged.
“If you were so strict on the rules, no one would finish and no one would have fun,” said instructor Carla Lewis, who admits she herself cuts corners in the game.
First to finish were newbies Sean Evans and son, Braden Evans.
“The hardest thing is trying to remember so many new things at once.”
12:14 p.m.
Festivus has come and gone, but Feats of Strength were going down nonetheless at Crossfit Durango.
About 40 of Durango’s strongest entered the strong man/woman competition, which was stretching well into the afternoon as contestants ran yokes and lifted dumbbells in lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight categories.
Yvette Wyskochil said she and her team trained for 3 months for the competition. Though she trains lightweight, she qualified for heavyweight for the contest, as the weights were scaled down to welcome more participants.
“It feels like everything you trained for finally happened and you can move on to the next thing,” was how Wyskochil described the feeling of hoisting a weight up.
Some blamed sweat for the weights slipping out of their hands. Others dropped the F bomb when they dropped the bar. But Ty Roberts, who entered the competition as a team with his wife, Jody, managed to lift a 255-pound log over his head, four times.
Roberts gained power from a pair of red-striped and star-spangled spandex.
“They’re actually a women’s large, so I’m just happy I could fit into them.”
9:30 a.m.
Problematic winds turned Saturday morning’s planned mass balloon ascension in Animas Valley into a mere mass inflation.
Ten balloons were all popping brightly against a white and gray mountain backdrop by 9 a.m. before a crowd of at least 100, to one spectator’s surprise, who assumed hangovers would have kept any balloon enthusiasts home in bed.
Even the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad rolled up with excited passengers to see the spectacle. But sadly, winds blowing from the wrong direction put a damper on any hopes for liftoff.
As Albuquerque balloonist Earl Buzzard of Buzzard’s Roost said, “It’s not going to work if we fly into that mountain.”
Snowdown 2016 Light Parade Results
Best in Parade
1. DSNGRR – Back to the Future
2. Rocky Mtn. Tiny Houses – Back to the ’80s
Best Use of Theme
1. CDOT – Highway to Hell
2. Durango Film Festival – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Best Use of Lights
1. Jazzercise – Girls Just Want to Have Fun
2. Honeyville
Best Children’s Entry
1. Durango Kids Ped Dentistry – Who You Gonna Call?
2. Mercy Diagnostics – ’80s Toy Box
Mayor’s Choice
1. City of Durango – Monopoly
2. Rocky Mtn. Tiny Houses – Back to the ’80s
Best “What the F*%k Was That”?
1. FC Health Center – Care Bears
2. Christians for Bernie Sanders
Judges: Lorie Naylor – Durango Colorado Vacations; Emyrald Sinclaire – Earth Girls; Seb Hartley – KW Real Estate; Tina McCallum – Morgan Stanley; Deanna Luna – person extraordinaire
