Featured Image: Courtesy of GoPro
The Line of the Winter is back for 2024, baby! GoPro’s on the hunt for the finest ski and board lines from this winter. Every month through April, Jamie Anderson, Tom Wallisch, Kai Jones, Sage Kotsenburg and Hedvig Wessel will come together to hand-pick their favorite clips and award both a skier and a boarder with a cool $10K. Sit skiers, adaptive snow athletes and ski-base athletes are also encouraged to submit. At the end of the season, the judges pick through the monthly winners and select their overall favorite to toss another $20k their way.
“In 2008, GoPro put a wide-angle lens on its camera. Up until then, the camera was really a point-and-shoot born out of surfing, but when it went wide angle, people really started becoming shooters and subjects of videos,” explains Christopher Prado, GoPro Associate Communications & Community Marketing Director. “People started to turn the camera back on themselves and use it for skiing.” In turn, the Line of the Winter contest emerged as a platform to highlight raw, unfiltered talent, and that’s exactly what it’s continuing to do.
The contest is judged on three criteria: athletic performance, video capture quality and overall wow factor. “Athletic performance is like when you see Logan Pehota or Colby Stevenson ski these lines that are just so insane from a pucker standpoint, or when we see Josh Dueck ripping down insane hardpack and taking 20ft airs to firm ice landings. There’s just sheer athletic performance in that skiing,” says Prado. “Video capture quality just means you have the camera mounted in the right place and chose good settings so we can really see your experience. The overall wow factor category leaves room for those absolutely bananas moments where we can be blown away by any factor of the shot or line.”
In 2015, Léo Taillefer scored the overall Line of the Winter winner with a mind-bending line in Val d Isère, France. “He gets straight off the chairlift, jumps through gullies, finds insane transitions and hoots and hollers the whole way down the mountain,” says Prado. It’s a prime example of the kind of videos GoPro is searching for.
All submissions must be shot 100 percent on GoPro, using any make of the camera. Pro Tip: from the Hero 7 onwards, all cameras feature a hyper smooth video stabilization technology, which can help you with a smoother capture. Once you’ve got your clip, there’s no editing, filtering or cropping allowed. Just download the raw footage from any GoPro camera and upload it to your socials using the hashtag #GoProLineOfTheWinter every month to be considered. For more information and terms and conditions, please visit gopro.com.
