Last weekend, the "King of Dolomites" photo contest was held for the third time in San Martino di Castrozza. Once again, 14 professional and over 100 amateur teams had the opportunity to put their skiing and photography skills to the test and capture the best moments around the impressive Pala Group.San Martino di Castrozza will be familiar to many freeriders since last winter, which was a record-breaking one in the Southern Alps. After all, the village with its three ski areas not only offers great potential for all kinds of snow sports, but also impresses with a panorama of the Dolomites that would make any picture book motif look old. The idea of organizing a competition in which freeriding and the spectacular mountain world are equally in the foreground was probably born from these basic conditions, as it is all about freeride action photos. In addition to the invited pro teams, the King of Dolomites also brings together numerous amateur teams ("Wannabes") and youth teams ("Wanna-Babies"), each consisting of one photographer and two riders. The teams have two days (Friday and Saturday for the pro teams, Saturday and Sunday for the amateurs) to take the best possible photos, the best of which are then judged by a jury. While the winners of the Pro category will receive cash prizes, the Wannabes and Wanna-Babies will receive non-cash prizes - as well as plenty of fame and glory, of course.
Exploring the ski area in advance
The first Pro teams arrived on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning to take advantage of the great weather to explore the area and enjoy a run or two. Most of them will have noticed a big difference to last year's event: the impressive amounts of snow from winter 2013/14 were nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of opportunities and, with a little searching, you can even find mostly settled but well-preserved powder snow. The event was officially launched in the evening, and after a few information sessions for photographers and riders, the movie Trial&Error by Whiteroom Productions was shown in the San Martino cinema.
Good conditions on the first day of the contest
The event kicked off on Friday for the pro teams, who quickly gathered at the various lifts in perfect weather. At the Rosetta Plateau in particular, there was a veritable flood of photographers at the beginning, but the various teams quickly spread out over the entire mountain, where most of them were out and about until the atmospheric sunset. Later in the evening, most of the teams met up at the Arc'teryx party in the "Ranch" in the center of San Martino, where most of the teams were already very satisfied with the day's photo yield. The positive photo result of the first day, together with the rather bad weather forecast for Saturday, probably also ensured that the party lasted well into the night ...
Bad weather on Saturday
Despite this, most of the pro teams were also at the start early on Saturday, as were the Wannabes and Wanna-Babies for whom the contest was just starting. Unfortunately, the weather gods were less kind to the participants today, with dense clouds quickly gathering and the snow also turning out to be frozen or even wind-affected after the rather warm Friday. Nevertheless, many teams were highly motivated to take photos, and once again it was proven that great photos can be taken even in "bad" conditions. So not only the third place in the Pros, but also second and third place in the Wannabes came from Saturday... In the late afternoon, light snowfall set in, which meant that great conditions could be expected again on Sunday. The Scarpa Mojito party was still well attended, but most of the participants probably went to bed a little earlier than the day before.
Final day and results
After the snowfall overnight had provided a good 20 cm of fresh snow, the sun came out again on Sunday morning, making for really good conditions once more. While the amateur teams naturally took advantage of this to take photos, the pro teams were out skiing, and the event village at Alpe Tognola with its numerous test materials was also well attended. After a powder day that was simply over too quickly, the teams gathered in the piazza in San Martino on Sunday afternoon for the presentation of the results and the award ceremony.
After the awards for the strong results of the Wanna-Babies and Wannabies, there was naturally great excitement among the pro teams. First, however, the jury announced a few "special mentions". Zoya Lynch was awarded the prize for the most emotional photo (rider Nat Seagal), Giulia Monego won the Instagram contest with a picture of Bruno Compagnet and Andrea Salini won the prize in memory of Alessandro Miola with his backflip photo. Among the pros, Alexandre Buisse from France was voted third place for his strong picture of Paolo Marazzi climbing up a narrow steep gully (photographed hanging from the rope). Second place went to Stefan Schlumpf from Switzerland with an atmospheric sunset shot of Lucas Swieykowski, while first place went to Guy Fattal from Israel, who photographed Dorian Konrad on an exposed descent high up in the Pala group. All the images in the Pro category were shown on a large screen in the piazza, almost being upstaged by the spectacular sunset on the Pala Group, which could be seen in nature over San Martino. Soon after, most of the participants, who had traveled from all over, made their way home with a bunch of new photos after an all-round successful event. Here is the event website, here are the pictures from the Pro category and here are the pictures from the Amateur category, which are just as worth seeing.
