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COPK National Jam - August 10-13, 2007
On August 10-13, 2007, over 100 people from all over the country came together in Colorado to do parkour and freerunning and meet and make new friends. With a solid representation from the east coast, west coast, Midwest, southwest, and more, an amazing jam was had. Read below for reports, reflections, and thoughts on this historic event for parkour in the USA.

Click here to download videos from the jam.

Day One - 08/10/2007 - Golden - Colorado School of Mines Campus

by Andrey from SFPK

We went to the School of Mines and there was lots of good stuff! Victor and I came there way early because we thought that it was going to be a long trip from our hostel, but it was not, it was about 30 minutes by bus. We came there at 11 and the jam was supposed to start at 3:00pm. So we just hung out there for a while.

At 3:00, everyone came, there were about 30 people there. We did some stretching, warming ups, and then did some precisions, they were pretty big ones, the one I remember was 10 foot, but there was a little point of elevation so it was possible to do. From these precisions, we went to the other place where there were possibilities of kong to precisions, tic tacs around pillars, and underbars. From there we went to some other place, where there was some rails, walls, possibilities of cat leaps, rail kong to precision, wall runs, big precisions and many more possibilities. We stayed here for about 2 hours. Two times rain interfered, but it was so hot that everything dried in no time. During one short rain storm, some people started playing wet, slippery, soaking tag in a big grass field. After that, we went to another area with some big kong to precisions down walls alongside the edge of stairs. After that, we went to many other places and one thing that I remember and that really impressed me was when Sat did a front flip over a rail to a 10+ ft. drop from first floor of the building and landed on grass going into a roll, it was awesome! After that, some people practiced some flips, and then Victor and I got rides from Alex which was sweet! We were so tired and the next day, I was very sore. All the people that were there were active and tried everything they could. It was great experience for me!!

Day Two - 08/11/2007 - Boulder - CU Boulder Campus, Boulder High School, Red Rocks, BBQ #1

by NoSole from SFPK

In the morning we all gathered at CU for our meet and greet where we took our big group photo. After that we all moved to a loading dock area that had a bunch of rails, walls, precisions, underbars, wall runs, grass, roof gaps, etc. Accomplishments of note consisted of: a massive wall run (~14ft) that Tony (from AZ) and I conquered; a sick kong to rail precision to front flip that Skipper, Sky Native, and Sat all pulled off in succession; a super long line of about 25 traceurs on a wall doing back flips off in one long wave; various other gainers, inwards, flips, and tricks.

Then we moved on to a stairwell that was very well situated for some good dashes, wall climbs, and few sweet flows from some traceurs. Then we did an official warm-up in a field nearby where others were tricking off the knee-high blocks. First casualty of the day came from NinjaMike (from TX) who dislocated his finger during the warm-up when he tripped. He was tough though, and played through the pain. He's definitely a talented traceur/free runner!

After that we headed toward our next location and did some hallway climbs (stem/press climbs) along the way. Unfortunately, Spoon (from AZ) repeated the feat using a glass window as one of his surfaces rather than the cement pillar nearby. As you might imagine, the pressure shattered the glass only a couple feet into the climb and deeply cut one of his wrists. The parents, traceurs, and officials that helped out were great in keeping him calm for the ambulance. Last I heard, he lacerated a couple tendons and has already undergone surgery to have them repaired. This was a terrible circumstance and I hope he makes a full recovery, so please let this be a lesson to us all! NEVER climb on glass or use it as a load bearing surface! NEVER! And always test your surroundings first!

The next location consisted of a series of 7-foot-square cement planter boxes, about 4 ft tall that several of us attempted to complete a level kong to precision. It was definitely not easy, but I think myself and about three others managed to pull it off. There was also a large 11 ft. diagonal standing gap precision. Nobody ever pulled this one off, but a few came very close!

Afterwards, we moved to a parking structure with terraced walls, good for wall runs and buildering, along with a couple crossbeams and rails for some hefty precisions. Tony, once again, pulled off the big wall run. Very impressive! Leon and Will got their finger tips up there, but couldn't hold on. The rest the group went through a "hot lava" type exercise around the perimeter of the parking garage. This was the final stage that the COPK guys do in their CU gauntlet. I didn't do this one, but st0ne mentioned that it was a lot of fun. Looked like a nice progression of tricky climbs, some QM, and precisions.

After a quick break and some Jamba Juice to replenish much needed calories, we all left CU and walked to Boulder High School. This was another great place that was not too far away. The best part about it (along with CU) was that the surfaces there are rough and provide some solid grip! I only saw a small portion of the school so if anyone else wants to fill us in on what the other parts of the school looked like, by all means, take the reigns.

A bunch of the tribe guys peeled off and ran around on the roof for a while, but I didn't ever get to see what was up there. Tony, Will, and I were all working a wall to rail precision…and it was a doozy! The gap was about 11 ft wide with a drop of about two or three ft. Tony and Will managed to clear the gap with a roll on the grass on the other side of the rail, but never actually went for the precision. After several attempts I landed a couple and stalled it out for a couple seconds… although, I would have been much happier to completely stick it. Christopher Robin (who often trains with PD in LA) and Sat, as well as few others, worked on some cat leaps jumping from the rail to the wall. I also noticed that Palu_Red and some guys from Ohio were messing around with underbars on branches and kong precisions. Nice flows!

Then SkyNative busted out a huge superman off the wall, over the rail, to a roll on the grass. There was also another kid who snagged a massive side flip in the same location. Awesome! I also did the superman, but it didn't look nearly as clean as SkyNative's. Looks like I've got some work to do, haha! And then he had to up the ante again and jumped an 11 ft. gap from the roof to wall and then down to the ground. While st0ne and a couple others did some tricking on the grass a bunch of use did some precision runs on a nice long line of lumber pillars that lined the curb.

By the time we finished, we were all really tired and ready to jump in the creek.

After BHS we all piled into cars a drove up the street a ways to a park area where we had a nice little creek to cool off. St0ne and I went straight to the creek and floated around for a while with some of the Tribe guys while Demon peeled off and took most of the others up a trail to do some bouldering on the red rocks nearby. I know that Andrey, Alex, and Victor all checked it out, so I'm hoping one of them can help me out with a quick recap.

Needless to say, the water was a great relief after a sweltering day of PK. To make things even better, APK picked up the tab on the giant sandwiches we had for dinner. And as is customary for national jams and large gatherings, M2 took another creative stab at cutting the watermelon… by exploding it with his elbow! Kip-Up was the unfortunate soul chosen to hold it and came out covered in pink.

After we all stuffed ourselves a couple of us retrieved a slack line and messed around with that while Demon unloaded some of his practice/training goodies (i.e. rings, low rails, etc.) they made for some good "king of the hill" competitions and thankfully nobody was injured. And of course, we all came together and put on a little game of horse by way of tricking.

by NinjaMike from TXPK

This was the first big jam day for us. Team MOZ took the bus and me and two other guys got a ride with a guy. The jam was at the University of Colorado in Boulder. It was huge and amazing, there were people everywhere, and I got psyched just by being around them.

We hit up a few places, at one point we did a back flip wave, it was awesome. I did a dive kong some guys wouldn't do, they tried to punch it, but the trick was to use one foot.

We also vaulted off of a huge wall into a stair set thing, everyone konged it, then out of no where Rek pulls a dash, it was insane.

Then we did a re-warm up. This was a bad idea, about 5 minutes in we start sprints, I trip and go into a roll, my ring finger didn't want to roll with me, so it dislocated at the first joint after the knuckle. So I left the warm up with a few guys to get a splint and ice pack. While we were gone, guys started to climb against glass and a wall, Spoon just happened to be the guy it breaks on. He got a huge gash in his wrist and it was about 1/2 inch deep, he was rushed to the hospital, then from there he was flown back to Arizona.

We hit a few other places, nothing real special. Then we all went to Jamba Juice, and from there, went to a school where people did crazy far precisions from really high, and did far flips. This was also another meet and greet.

We made our way back to the cars, and then headed up to Red Rocks, where we climbed big rocks and took a few pictures. Then we headed to a park for food.

At the park there were a lot of us that could do flips, so we did, it was awesome to be around so many people that could trick. For dinner we had a few huge 4ft. or so subs courtesy of APK. Then we played a few PDQ games (it is the best game ever).

That was basically the last thing of the day. But when couple of guys in my room left, they took the key, SO some of us had no way to get into our rooms, so we went to check out a few places for tomorrow, crazy awesome places. Then we did some yoga poses and stuff, very relaxing.

by M2 from APK

The next morning Carissa hooked us up with huge pancakes and some eggs while Matt made some mad smoothies. Truly great hosts! We got all our stuff together and headed out (late) to join the crew at CU Boulder. After a quick stop for a quad iced espresso and some Mini-DV tapes we arrived in style (still 6 of us in the car, NoSole's turn to be on top) at the CU Boulder Engineering center. The first 9 people I saw were, disappointingly enough, guys I know well. I saw Steven Low, Akh, Skipper, Leon, Skynative, Cloud, Kipup, and Demon.

The other 50 people I didn't know so well, yet. After a brief camera fest (people filming people filming people with camcorders) Demon quickly rounded us up for a group shot while we were all together. Somehow I ended up sitting on Leon's head. These things happen. The architecture at Boulder is amazing! The buildings are made from cut stone, built in a brick like pattern, except that the faces of the stone are left rough to jut out, creating very grippy, climbable walls. There are also boulders (oddly enough) all over the place, and in Boulder they're very good at using these as landscaping elements which is both aesthetic and very palatable for the traceur! Tony from Team MOZ was the first to nail a huge wall climb. Sat Santokh, Skipper, and Skynative did some impressive kong to rail precision to front flips in sequence, and someone came up with the idea to create a massive back flip wave off a wall which was spectacular, like being at a beach with an ocean made of agile people. Someone did a roof gap which was pretty high up. A few guys worked on a very cool kong to precision on one of the earlier mentioned boulders, although I don't know what size it goes from "rock" to "boulder" these may have just been plain old rocks.

From there we moved to a very cool dolphin gray concrete stairway in a shaded area. The stairway has a nice drop from a low wall on the top side to the landing where the stairway wraps around itself. Demon did this as a kong to drop onto the stairs themselves (very technical) although I missed it as I was introducing myself to Sat's parents. There were a surprising number of adults there, some in support, some as chauffeurs and some just out of curiosity. What I did see were some people taking the drop very hard, amplified by the hollow echo of the concrete. I hope their knees forgive them some day. Apparently someone then upped the ante by front flipping the whole lot. It was a pretty good drop, about 10 feet.

As we moved to the next spot a few of us discussed that there were a lot of extremely talented people around, but that there were also a lot of guys who hadn't gotten involved yet. Matt (kannagasai) led a great and grueling warm-up that brought everyone in synch and got people out of "standing around with hands in pockets" mode.

What happened as we moved to the next spot can only be described as terrible. There was a narrow hallway, more like an outdoor breezeway formed by a glass-enclosed staircase on one side and a smooth concrete wall on another. A couple of people made their way through this in a "stem" - a climb where you force your feet against one wall and your hands against an opposing wall and shimmy yourself along. I can only guess that they used the black metal window frames a support for their hands. When "Spoon" tried the same move, he had assumed that people had been supported by the glass - a wrong assumption and a tragic mistake. He got himself up to about 5 feet and then started to traverse, by pressing directly on the glass. I looked over immediately as I heard the sickening vacuum sound of a large pane of glass yielding to the force of Spoon's hands. I saw Spoon fall down amid the shattering glass as if it was happening in slow motion. Luckily, he landed on his feet, not pushing through the glass and falling into the stairwell. I saw him retract his hands and for a moment had a ray of hope, thinking "I know that when this happens, people get cut up, badly - could this be the one time that someone escapes in a stroke of luck that beats the laws of skin vs. glass?" But Spoon was cut badly. I was about eight steps away when this happened, and by the time I got my hands free of pulling my shirt over my head, someone else already had their shirt off and over Spoon's wrist. I adjusted the one that was there, added my own for extra compression, and squeezed as-hard-as-you-would-if-you-felt-you-could-hold-the-life-from-draining-out-of-someone-hard. I yelled for someone to call 911, and the phone was already dialed. Fortunately there was a trained EMT who just happened by. He came over to help, donned a pair of latex gloves, and had us remove the t-shirts to apply a sterile gauze pad. As we removed the shirts we could see that it was a very serious cut, unfortunately Spoon looked too…and understandably became even queasier than he was. He apologized, saying "This isn't the image we want for Parkour" - a selfless thought at such a time. We comforted him and assured him that the ambulance wasn't far off. I squeezed my hands around the EMT's hands to help keep the pressure on, and had him wrap his thumbs around Spoon's wrist to keep pressure. When the ambulance arrived, they asked us to remove the gauze and t-shirts. As we pulled our hands away to be replaced by the ambulance crew's experienced digits, I couldn't help but look again into the deep wound. One of the ambulance crew stroked Spoon's fingers asking him if he could feel it, he said "a little" to which she replied "that means yes?" a stern question as her mind worked to determine the extent of the damage. We helped Spoon onto the stretcher and they wheeled him into the ambulance. Team MOZ "Ma" volunteered to accompany Spoon to the hospital. Meanwhile, an officer who arrived with the ambulance was asking for details. I gave the officer Spoon's cell phone number. He was extremely reasonable and I have to say received the situation with a calm that surprised me. We explained to him that there was no harm intended and that we fully intended to pay for the damage. I gave him my full name and phone number. As things were now under control, I grabbed my camera and got a parting shot of Spoon - who apologized again. I surveyed the damage to the window, unable to tear my mind from the terrible things that could have happened if Spoon's momentum had been in the direction of the stairwell. The massive pane of glass hung with jagged tinted fangs, I was afraid of it having seen its wrath, but stuck my hand through to get a picture of the stairwell below. What was left were broken glass, some blood, and a reminder to traceurs everywhere - your brain is your most powerful safety equipment, and you need to evaluate situations based not only on "what you can do" but on what your environment can sustain. Later in the night we heard that Spoon was being flown back to Phoenix to have emergency surgery on the tendons in his wrist.

Many people had already moved to a quad area by Baker hall before the Spoon incident, so the small group that stayed behind with him headed up that way. NoSole was trying on huge precision from an angled concrete pillar to the corner of a planter. Not only was it a formidable gap, but the conditions were way less than ideal. In the end, I think I saw 5 or 6 people stand up, size it up, and slink away, deciding to find a more suitable challenge. Skipper tried it and got his feet across, but not with enough momentum to finish it off. NoSole came within foot-pounds, not inches, as his feet were there, he just couldn't pull his hips through. At the same time, Sat and some others were trying a massive kong to precision across some planters. I think Sat nailed it, Demon nailed it, and some others may have. Tony from Team MOZ took a shot at it from another angle, but I was focused on the precision, not sure if he ever pulled it off.

At the parking garage there is a great wall-climb with multi levels that many people had a go at. Tony was the first to make it up the biggest part; I think Leon may have been the only other person to summit the massive vertical plane.

Day Three - 08/12/2007 - Denver - Skyline Park, 16th St. Mall, Sakura Square, Denver Center of Performing Arts, BBQ #2

by NoSole from SFPK

Woke up to a wretched soreness from the intensity of the day before, but it was all good. Our first stop for the day, Cat Fountain in downtown Denver, um…how do I put this…? SIIIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCKKKK!!!! The absolute best single place to PK on the face of this earth! This fountain couldn't be any better if they had literally tried to make it for PK. There are cat leaps and precisions galore! Tic tics over big gaps and wall runs all over the place. There is so much to do in this spot that we actually spent ¾ of the day there and they (Demon and kannagisai) pretty much had to force us to move on.

In the morning, me, Leon, and SkyNative were all hitting a big step-up tic tac over a gap, which was a lot of fun. Demon pretty much owned everything and was busting bigger cat to cats, both up and down, than I've seen anyone do in a long time! PD found another big tic tac to precision and later on pulled off a standing back tuck on the highest point of the fountain. Tony conquered the biggest cat I've ever seen in person, and then Kipup, Skipper, and Cloud all hit a big tic tac to roll in succession. It looked hot! NinjaMike knocked out a really tricky kong to drop and roll a few times and I was very impressed. I also saw Andrey and Alex working on some nice cats and tic tacs too. There was a whole line of people too that pushed out a bunch of kong to front flips. Also, Christopher Robin caught a few tricky cat leaps and Strydzz was rolling out side flips and front flips like they were going out of style! I'm definitely not giving credit to enough people on this one because there was so much going on and I just can't pull it to the front of my brain right now.

Tribe set up for a demonstration to promote the new K-Swiss Ariake so there was a decent sized crowd that had gathered. Then they broke into a quick 10-15 demo and bounced all over the structure. And as you might imagine, Leon and SkyNative stole the show with their crazy good spatial awareness as they flipped and spin through the air. After the demo a bunch of people were playing PDQ (I'll do a write-up on this in another section too) and then most of the people peeled off to The Athlete's Foot to continue the Ariake promotion while a small group of us stayed behind to practice more.

by NinjaMike from TXPK

This jam was downtown, so we didn't have to go far. The first place was "Cat Fountain", a huge fountain that is perfect for cats, hence the name. Loads of awesomeness was had here. We also played PDQ here a few times. I did one of the biggest things there, vaulting off of a small wall over the stairs that look at the fountain, people said that it was a "Texas Parkour vault" because of the run up and distance needed to clear the stairs. This hit a note with me, because this shows that we have a reputation to up hold.

We watched as The Tribe did a demo for a shoe store for a few minutes, then we headed over to the store for I'm not sure why. But we ended up doing a wave of wall flips, it was awesome. Then we went for lunch, I went with a few local guys, but the places were all closed, so we started to go back up the street when we saw a guy from Fight or Flight, doing flips for chicks, so I yelled at him to do them right and joined him. After a few minutes of flipping we found a good restaurant and ate and talked about a jam of all of us and them.

Then we headed back to the fountain, after the meeting, we headed to another area, small stuff nothing awesome. We start walking through the city to new areas hitting things as we go, then we see a huge roof gap, of course Skynative looks at it and says easily "I'll do it." So we all get in position, then BAM, huge jump, huge air, it was awesome.

We then headed to the Denver Center of Performing Arts where everyone starts to do their own thing, we play a few fun games, and after a few hours of messing around we all start to head out to get ready for the BBQ.

After the jam, we went to a BB at kannagisai's apartment complex. There was some freaking good food courtesy of COPK hosts Demon and kannagisai. It was the first time I went swimming in a long time. Everyone just hung out talking, swimming, playing volleyball, and then after the sun went down we played "Ball Ball". Basically it was 2 guys with exercise balls running full speed then jumping at each other. There would be huge impacts flying back or up, like rag dolls. It was the funniest thing you have ever seen in your life.

Day Four - 08/13/2007 - Morrison - Red Rocks Amphitheater and Park

by Demon from COPK and The Tribe

On the final day of the national jam, we headed to Red Rocks Amphitheater in the morning. By this day, nearly everyone had left, and our group had shrunk to about 15 people including Demon, Jesse, Justin, Sat, Strydzz, PD, Rich, NoSole, Ando, Willgrind, kannagisai, Christopher Robin, and a few others.

Everyone was tired, sore, and generally thrashed from the previous few days. However, we all wanted to make the best of the last day and forced ourselves to keep training. We warmed up at the top and then moved down toward the stage. Unfortunately, we couldn't train on the stage as it was all set up for a concert. Instead, we drilled all kinds of underbar variations on some rails nearby. We then moved on and did some movements between the walls and the rocks. It was getting extremely hot, so we decided to move to the boulder fields outside of the amphitheater where it was shadier.

We got to the boulders and everyone started doing jumps and runs through the rocks. Most of us could not do nearly everything we wanted to because of fatigue, but it was still awesome to just sit back, hang out, and watch each other play on the rocks. We moved from the bottom of the boulder field to the top. Some people did some big jumps and PD did one particularly cool thing where he spiraled around a naturally formed semi-circle slanted wall of rock. He ran along the steep slope over a big drop and then precisioned down to another rock. Awesome!

Everyone was now totally tired and after a little more exploring, we decided to call it a day and grab some food at Qdoba and Jamba Juice. We spent the last hour just resting and talking with our new and old friends and reflected on what had been an incredible weekend.

Last Thoughts:

"Wow! Where do I begin? To sum it up quickly, it was by far the best jam ever! Everyone that came had a great attitude and everyone got along really well, and yes, Colorado definitely has the best PK terrain I've ever seen! It far exceeded all expectations I had coming in."

- NoSole from SFPK

"Wow that was amazing! Close to 100 people showed up for the jam. Everyone was extremely nice and helpful to others. It was the best weekend ever! I met people that are insane at every aspect of Parkour and freerunning. I learned a new game and gave the guys a reason to love Texas Parkour. You kids should have been there."

- NinjaMike from TXPK

"The thing that impressed me most about this COPK jam wasn't Skynative's ridiculous everything, Leon's ENERGY LEGS!, or NoSole's 10 pound cajones, but simply the kindness and respect everybody showed each other. No where else can I think of a place where 80 people that have never met before can become such close friends with each other. The level of friendliness that people showed just blew me away."

- Sat Santokh from COPK

"That was amazing. Thank you to everyone that hosted people during the event, you guys are what make these jams work! It was so inspiring to see the raw talent being developed all over the country, and even more so to see it come gather together in friendship, without ego. The Colorado scene is amazing, and i hope to become a permanent part of it very soon."

- Willgrind from The Tribe

"On behalf of Fight or Flight, I would like to thank Colorado Parkour for having this jam and being so welcome and willing to share your hotspots, knowledge, and experience with us. This was our first jam, and after speaking with many traceurs that have been to their fair share, I was told that this has been one of the best. We gained so much from this trip; training, knowledge, and friendship, and we will strive to carry on everything we have gained and make it continue to grow. One of the best aspects of this trip was meeting the people I have spoken with over the net, the people I have seen in videos, and especially the many other traceurs that I have never even heard of. There were so many positive, eager, and like-minded people. This trip has left us all inspired and hungry from more. We are definitely looking forward to seeing you all again!"

- Digital Kid from Fight or Flight

"I think the majority of what brought about this great sense of community and respect was the Colorado PK community as a whole. You guys were such gracious hosts and such effective leaders that the jam was able to go off so well, and people went into it with an attitude of respect, cooperation, and learning, which IMO is what the focus of any jam should be. The COPK traceurs provided such great examples of conduct and hospitality, and I think that went a long way towards everyone putting their best feet forward for this event."

- Muse of Fire from Madison Parkour