One hundred feet above and 100 feet out over a ravine off Squaw Creek Road southwest of Edwards on most days you can find professional slackliner Davis Hermes highlining freestyle tricks.

His balancing motions on the line are calculated and his focus is razor sharp as he bounces between the ground below and the clouds above.

The Eagle County resident has been slacklining half his life — for reference, he’s only 25 — and there are few days you won’t find him balancing high above the sage brush in Colorado’s western mountains.

Hermes first saw the sport at the Teva Mountain Games in 2012 — renamed the GoPro Mountain Games in 2013 — and was immediately addicted.

“That was the first year that they had slacklining there,” Hermes said. “I was working printing T-shirts at a booth that was there and my friends kept coming up to me like, ‘yo, you gotta come see this’.”

Then on the last day of the Games, he walked over to where the slackline was, watched those athletes compete on the trick line and just knew he had found his calling.

“I didn’t even have to try it,” he said. “I knew that it was something that I was gonna be into. I got a line that day and told myself that I was gonna do it, at least every day.”

So Hermes did. He slacklined every day for years, he said. He’d slackline before school, after school, and even reached out to slackline manufacturer Gibbon to arrange an outdoor education day at his school. He was addicted.

Within a year Hermes had entered his first competition in spring 2013. From then on, not only had he become one of the world’s foremost athletes in the sport, he was out there on slacklines having fun, feeling free.

“It feels like you’re floating, you know. It’s something that’s undescribable to people that don’t do it.”

Fast forward to 2025, Hermes has been a staple for over a decade, and now has a new role while representing slackliners at the GoPro Mountain Games.

Hermes is one of three people that organize the slacklining event at the Mountain Games and he’s also one of nine athletes named to the Mountain Games Athlete Team.

The Mountain Games Athlete Team is a new program the Vail Valley Foundation created for 2025. The idea with the team was to have blossoming athletes from various outdoor sports like slacklining and freestyle kayaking embody core values such as: a passion for human-powered mountain sports, an active outdoor lifestyle, eco-consciousness and a spirit of adventure.

“The goal is picking people who embody the mountain spirit,” Hermes said. “I know that’s the case for a lot of other athletes on the Mountain Games Athlete Team. It’s people that are stoked on being outside and stoked on sharing the outside with other people.”

And helping to embody that mountain spirit recently Hermes has had a part in hosting the slacklining competition while helping to bring in international athletes to compete in it as well.

“Partaking in the performance at the International Bridge and making sure the competition runs smoothly, it’s been a really cool full circle moment to be able to host this event that introduced me into the sport,” he said.

Hermes said spectators can see athletes compete on a trick line, which is a two-inch thick slackline with thousands of pounds of force pulling the line tight for competitors to ‘bounce’ on and perform tricks on, similar to a trampoline.

“At the mountain games for the trick lining, we adopt more of an a subjective approach, where there’s a lot of emphasis on style and creativity,” Hermes said of how the competition is judged. “And it’s like, hey, are you doing something that’s new? Are you doing something that’s unique that no one else is doing? I find that I really support that aspect of competition, especially in a new sport because it encourages uniqueness.”

With the GoPro Mountain Games starting in two weeks, athletes will begin to make their way to the four-day festival.

Spectators can try their hand at slacklining in Gear Town at Solaris Plaza each day starting at 10 a.m. Spectators can also watch slackline competitors compete in the Celsius Trickline Invitational Open starting Thursday at 10 a.m.

Be sure to look for Hermes around the slackline competitions and say hi.