How to look at the canvas of Whistler Blackcomb and portray it in a whole new light is the driving force behind the Deep Winter photo challenge, presented by Arc'teryx and Whistler Blackcomb. The show calls for the documentation of a typical January storm session shot in bounds and within mountain-operating hours, which is then compiled into a three- to five-minute slideshow to be presented to a don't-fuck-with-them-on-a-pow-day crowd. Despite rock-hard terrain and sunny conditions, the six photographers competing for the title of King of the Storms - Jussi Grznar, Mason Mashon, Mark Gribbon, Steve Lloyd, Robin O'Neill, and Rueben Krabbe - all pushed the shutter button harder than any of the landings their crews took for three days straight.

Team Jussi. Nick Vail photo.

Jussi Grznar shot with Dave Short, Kevin Sansalone, Chris Rasman, Colin D. Watt, and skier Jeff Boakes, with a submission themed "Tree of Life", dedicated to all the ones lost doing what they love. Behind the scenes, Grznar went for it using an RC heli with a joystick transmitter to get aerial shots of a hockey player skating across Green Lake, he climbed trees and rigged up a camera to get an overhead sequence of Short blasting though the forest, hung off a cliff (held back with nothing more than Andrew Strain holding on to Grznar's belt) to get the shot of climber Alex Filler getting roped down a rock-gnar wall, convinced the mountain mechanics to let him shoot the blades of a snowcat, and also shot Whistler park builder Lucas Oullette while he pumped a snow cat full of gas. You'll have to ask the source, but the buzz amongst the crowds was over how did Grznar get the shot of Oullette from inside the cat's gas tank? There were some epic lifestyles: Rusty Ockenden fly-fishing and Mikey Pederson lying in bed with his pregnant girlfriend, Catherine Richards, as she hugged their dog.

Asking Mark Gribbon - who MC Feet Banks introduced as "the guy they call the moral compass" - what the best part of Deep Winter was, he replied, "Now that it's over, and I can sleep again." It's a grueling three days of lugging equipment around and trying to find spots to shoot, especially when Gribbon, who went with a Dexter theme, never scoped beforehand and just went for it.

Wiley Tesseo, method, at the Harmoney waterfall. Mark Gribbon photo.

Gribbon, who should be given the Method fans choice award for his sweet shot of [Wiley] Tesseo - was unavailable for further questions, so his assistant Ross Tripp stepped up and dished out the following tale from Joel Loverin, Wiley Tesseo, and Trevan Salmon experience:

The crew went to the Harmony waterfall first thing one morning. There were no lines through, so the three dudes lined up at different spots, hit it, and then we went to lap around again. Second time around, there were more punters coming down on the cliff band: one lady sliding down on her ass with another snowboarder behind her kind of walking down. They screamed up, "You shouldn't be on cliffband; we are below you." The next thing, they hear a 50-year-old guy above them say, "Fuck this shit; this is sketchy," who then proceeded to yell "Skis! Skis! Skis!" repeatedly. Looking up, the crew saw a ski coming down the waterfall straight towards them, but luckily it got wedged in a tree at the bottom of the waterfall. While the older guy with one rental ski on is causing a clusterfuck, the snowboarder tried to air off the cliff and bailed. Shaun Anderson yelled up, "Hey buddy, do you wanna know where your ski is?" After a long silence, the skier shouted down, "Want to make a hundred bucks?" Anderson didn't hesitate and yelled back up, "Nope." The skier tried again, "I'm staying at the Delta, room number whatever. If you put my ski on the bamboo over there, I will walk back up, which will take me over an hour, so come to my hotel for $100." The British kid that bailed off the waterfall goes and grabs the ski and puts it by the bamboo. Needless to say, the crew broke into laughter when the kid asked them if they remember the room number because he forgot it. The best part? The skier was way too far up to hear the kid screaming for his room number.

With stories like these it safe to say Gribbon nailed what is the norm for a day in the life of a Whistler crew; however, one question remains: what's it like being the moral compass anyways?

(keep reading for highlights from Mason Mashon, and of course, to find out who won)