Steel & Dust — the Colorado Medieval Festival from above

Colorado Medieval Festival · June 2024

Words & drone — Sindbad Horizon

There is a moment, early in a Knights of Mayhem pass, when a first-time crowd figures out what it is actually watching. Theater applauds on cue. This crowd gasps first.

The Colorado Medieval Festival runs one June weekend a year at The Savage Woods, a family-run event ground in the trees off Savage Road — the same outfit that stages Loveland's haunted walks come fall. Most of the year it sits quiet. For three days it becomes a hamlet: merchant rows, music, banners, mead — and at the center of it, a dirt jousting list and a timber combat pen built for keeps.

The headliners are the Knights of Mayhem, the full-contact jousting troupe founded by Charlie Andrews — a world-champion heavy-armor jouster, and the man National Geographic built a series around in 2011. Their sport has no script: real lances, real armor, and passes that put a rider in the dirt when the hit lands square.

Three riders down the lists at once.Watch the full film on YouTube

A single pass takes seconds. A rider commits at the far end, the horse opens up, and the lists close to a blur — then the lances meet, and the crowd finds out together whether the hit landed.

Pass one — the lists

Aerial view of a knight on a white horse charging down the jousting lane between festival crowds — First pass of the afternoon.

Two armored riders in the lists, the white horse in the foreground, crowds along both rails — Resetting in the lists.

Their sport has no script — theater applauds on cue, but this crowd gasps first.

Pass two — the pen

The joust shares the bill with armored ground combat. In the timber pen, fighters in full plate go at it with blunt steel until the marshal's yellow flag ends the bout. From directly overhead the sport reads plainly: fighters go down, get helped off the rails, and line right back up for the next round.

Aerial view of the timber combat pen under blue shade sails — armored team bouts mid-fight, spectators packed at the fence — Team bouts under the shade sails, crowd three deep at the fence.

Aerial view of two armored fighters squaring up in the wooden combat arena, a marshal in yellow between them — Yellow flag up — the only thing that ends a bout.

Three simultaneous armored bouts at the corners of the combat arena, seen from above — Three bouts at once at the corners of the pen.

Pass three — the grounds

Aerial view of the festival procession walking the jousting lane between the crowds — The procession takes the lane.

And between the violence, the festival does what festivals do — the procession takes the lane, gowns and banners on the same dirt the horses just tore up. Half theater, half genuine hazard: Loveland's strangest June tradition, and its best one.

Field log

Site: The Savage Woods — Loveland, CO
Event: Colorado Medieval Festival (annual)
Date: June 2024
Discipline: Full-contact joust · armored combat
Troupe: Knights of Mayhem

Wide aerial view of the whole tournament ground — tents, the jousting lists, the combat arena, and the festival crowd — The Savage Woods at full tilt, June 2024.

Steel &andDust

Steel andDust