Earlier this summer, Elevation Outdoors readers responded to a call-out to submit their best stories of life-changing Colorado adventures for a chance to have their stories featured in a print issue of the magazine. Hope Gately, a former flatlander who now calls Colorado home, took home top honors, and her feature story,”The Slow Reveal”, can be found in the magazine’s latest issue and at elevationoutdoors.com with an illustration by artist Jeremy Collins.

Meet the authors of the top five submissions from this year’s contest.

Winner: Hope Gately “The Slow Reveal”

Move to Colorado to embrace the mountains and you have to live up to the badass idyll and become a rad, overachieving climber, skier, hiker… or do you? An injury and real time in the hills taught this transplant the true meaning of the life in the high country.

Runner Up: Kurt Buss “Unstuck at Elevation”

In 1980, a Midwestern fresh out of college got lost in the snow and stars of Rocky Mountain National Park. It made him a Coloradan.

Finalist: Vincent Puzick “Solo Spirit”

This classic, and still powerfully simple, Outward Bound experience of being alone in the wild resonates 45 years later.

Finalist: Dave Shelles “The Mountains Win”

Climbing Colorado’s fourteeners never gets old.

Finalist: Ann Marie Swan “Moving Chipeta Mountain”

Renaming a Colorado peak in honor of an unsung Ute woman hero is a win for peace.