West Elk Project Vision Quest winners announced

Fan voting still going on, check out westelkproject.com

The West Elk Project Vision Quest came to a conclusion last week with a snowboard film, Follow None, taking top honors and a cash prize of $2,200.
The Vision Quest was the brainchild of Brett Conover and developed this past summer while painting houses.
“I paint with a bunch of the guys who ended up doing it and we spent the whole summer b-s-ing about it and getting feedback from potential competitors,” says Conover.
Conover took the idea to Will and Ed Dujardin of the West Elk Project to see if they would sponsor the Vision Quest. West Elk Project is a locally produced media website covering the progression of action sports and arts in the West Elks of Colorado and beyond. The Dujardin brothers jumped on board as title sponsors and Conover managed to get local businesses Kochevar’s Saloon, Crested Butte Gear Exchange, The Mountain Store, Teocalli Tamale, Izzy’s, Camp4Coffee and Sky High Off-Road to throw in prizes.
Conover then entered the Forest Service approval process and with everything up to snuff, the Vision Quest video contest was on.
The idea behind the Vision Quest contest was to provide backcountry skiers and snowboarders an opportunity to film themselves in the backcountry and edit their footage into five-minute films. They had a contest window of February 7 to February20 to film and edit and present their movies to a panel of judges that included Wendy Fisher, Mike Horn, Jesse Hall, Eben Wight and Aaron Blunck.
The only restraints were the number of athletes per team, the length of the movie and when and where they could film as deemed by the permit with the Forest Service.
“We let the teams go their own way with their films,” says Conover. “There’s more opportunity to show your style and what you do, from straight-up ski porn to more documentary style. We wanted to give people as much of an open canvas as we could.”
It just so happened that a historic storm rolled into the area during the contest window February 7-20 for filming and teams and organizers were faced with dangerous avalanche conditions in the backcountry.
“It was an unprecedented storm and an unprecedented avalanche cycle,” says Conover. “We all got together a week into it to discuss alternative plans to maintain safety. I didn’t sleep a whole lot during that time.”
Adjustments were made while still following Forest Service permit protocol and in the end five teams managed to get out and film, with four teams submitting final products for the judges.
“We pulled it off and nobody got hurt,” says Conover.
In the end a snowboard film by Austin Gibney, Andrew Buergin, Mary Boddington, Kyle Anderson, Corey Felton and Matt Berglund took top honors.
Precise Painting Freeride Team of Rob Dickinson, Tom Runcie, Jack Weise, Sydney Dickinson, Peter Smith and Trent Bona placed second and TEAM BOB of Forrest Cole, Nick Fountain, Clark Fountain, Daniel Sethness and Michael Fritz placed third.
There was also a photo contest included in the Vision Quest and as of right now third and fourth components are going on—the fan voting and a top athlete award. The films can be found at westelkproject.com for viewing and voting until March 20 with $1,000 going to the winning team.
All of the athletes and filmers involved are also voting on the top athlete award for one stand-out performance in particular from all of the movies. The winner will get an avalanche airbag compliments of the Crested Butte Gear Exchange.
“We want to take it from a local event and open up to a wider audience,” says Conover.
Conover hopes to expand the Vision Quest project to include a “side country” video contest and host the event at a resort that offers that option as well as a summer contest to expand it to include mountain biking and other summer adventure sports.
“It was a lot of fun and I’m going to keep at it,” says Conover.