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It is with great pleasure that we announce the opening bell of the Fan Favorite vote in the first all-video, all out-of-bounds-shred Winter X Games contest, Real Snow Backcountry. As the name suggests, it works just like Real Snow, only on mountains instead of urban ledges and handrails. Gigi Rüf, Nicolas Müller, John Jackson, Devun Walsh, Iikka Backstrom, Mathieu Crepel, Jussi Oksanen and Mark Sollors have all submitted 90-second video parts, for your consideration. To watch the videos in all their full-frame glory, click on the names of the riders in that last sentence there. When you're done, go to the Real Snow Backcountry home page to cast your vote.

First round voting will run until Feb. 28. Second round voting runs Feb. 29 - March 7. Final round voting runs March 8-15. Winners will be announced live at Winter X Games Tignes on March 15, and on ESPN2 on March 16 at 2:30 p.m. ET. Winner of the Fan Favorite vote (that's where you all come in) get $10,000 and bragging rights. So spread the word and vote for your favorites now!

Women's skiing and snowboarding has come a long way since the events were first added to the Winter X Games program (in 1997 for snowboarding, '99 for skiing).

Just take a look at the level of tricks. While 540s used to win women's halfpipe contests, in 2011, Kelly Clark landed the first 1080 in a women's contest at Winter X Aspen to secure the gold in Snowboard SuperPipe. This year, Clark and skier Brita Sigourney stuck 10s in the pipe, while skier Kaya Turski won her third Slopestyle gold at WX Aspen with the first switch 1080 landed in the history of women at Winter X.

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Last year's gold medalist in Ski SuperPipe at Winter X Europe, Kevin Rolland will return to his home country of France to compete in Winter X Tignes, taking place March 14 - 16. Rolland placed fourth at Winter X Games Aspen in January, but he says he's coming into Tignes with a new run and some new tricks up his sleeve. We spoke to Rolland about his plans for competing on his home turf.

American rider Chas Guldemond and Canadian Spencer O'Brien tamed an icy monster of a slopestyle course to be crowned snowboarding's first World Slopestyle Champions here in Oslo, Norway today. It rarely happens at any contest, but for once everything -- riding, the course and judging -- came together to give the thousands-strong crowd the kind of tense spectacle competitive snowboarding has been crying out for.

For organizer Henning Anderson and the team of workers who have toiled for months to make this event happen, there was vindication and the satisfaction of seeing a long-term vision come to fruition. At times it hasn't been an easy road, but today the winning riders were unanimous in their praise of the event and what it meant for the sport of snowboarding, with Guldemond saying the WSC was "the best event in snowboarding so far. I'm proud to be here."

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The World Snowboarding Championships in Oslo, Norway more than lived up to the hype tonight, as Kelly Clark and Iouri Podladtchikov were confirmed as snowboarding's newest World Champions after an epic halfpipe final. Both had started the event as narrow favrites, but were pushed all the way to the end by some familiar names and a few of snowboarding's fast-rising up-and-comers.

All the riders were helped by a perfect pipe and misty, rainy weather conditions that made the thing ride fast and loose. Among the early standouts in the women's event were Cilka Sadar from Slovenia. Sadar's first run may not have been as technical or high as some of the other riders, but she showcased arguably the best style of the day with a smooth first run that included frontside 7, Cab 7 and a silky backside alley-oop. She was soon eclipsed by Gretchen Bleiler and her trademark Crippler, however, and Spain's Queralt Castellet, who was arguably the biggest dark horse of the entire event.

Castellet's first run included a backside 9 and frontside 9, and put her in second place, just ahead of Bleiler. It still wasn't enough to stop Clark from taking an early lead she never relinquished: Her first run included a lofty frontside 10, a cab 7 and backside 5 to set the pace.

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Oslo's huge Holmenkollen ski jumping arena played host to a proper, old school throwback of a snowboarding contest tonight, as the winner of the quarterpipe event at the inaugural World Snowboarding Championships was crowned in front of thousands of stoked, rowdy Norwegians.

The pre-match hype had all been about whether local legend Terje Haakonsen could best his 9.8 meter world record for highest air. Haakonsen rose to the occasion, as expected, but was pushed off the podium thanks to a strong showing from the rest of the riders -- especially eventual winner Olivier Gittler.

A quarterpipe session is about as primal as snowboarding gets. It's also probably just about the most accessible type of snowboarding comp out there too. For a start, anyone can understand it -- the "winner" is the guy who goes the highest and lands. Simple. These days, in a world where tricks are getting ever more spectacular and complicated, and working out a winning run involves complex equations of style and technicality, there's something pretty refreshing about that.

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Freestyle snowmobiler Dylan Harju is in a coma in the intensive care unit at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., after an accident on Monday at Justin Hoyer's home in Ellsworth, Wisc. Harju crashed after over-rotating a backflip while training for the upcoming Monsters of Dirt events, Feb. 24-25 in Vienna, Austria, where he was scheduled to fill in for Hoyer, who was injured last month on a double backflip attempt during the Snowmobile Best Trick competition at Winter X Games Aspen.

"It was really a fluke thing," says friend and fellow rider Josh Huppert, who witnessed Harju's crash. "The sled just flipped really quick and he locked it up right away coming around, but it didn't really slow down the rotation because it was flipping so fast. Dylan rode it out the best you'd want to and pitched his sled at the last second to get away from it. He maybe fell four or five feet from his sled once he'd pitched it, and he hit the landing with his full body, but he was unresponsive to us screaming in his helmet so we called the ambulance right away."

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Most mainstream sports fans know Shaun Palmer for his scene-stealing multi-sport performances at the Winter X Games. In the early days of X, Palmer bounced between gold medals in Downhill Mountain Biking and Snowboarder x wins before taking top slots in Skier X and Ultracross, too. Between 1998 and 2001 he earned multiple "athlete of the year" accolades.

But snowboarders know him as something more than a fierce competitor. Palmer played a major role in the development of snowboarding, and for years was the poster boy for the culture's early unruly, anti-conformist attitude. He is also the owner of one of the all-time best methods.

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There's something about the night crew at a ski area. We're talking about the graveyard shift groomers who drive snowcats while everyone else is sleeping or partying. They're hard-working folks who come out under the cloak of darkness to get the mountain primed for the next day. We rarely see them but we see -- and appreciate -- the work that they do.

During Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., photographer Chip Kalback decided to spend an evening with the Aspen Mountain snowcat drivers, including Derrin Carelli, Pat Cooke, Brad Dingess and others, to document the hard work they put in every night for us skiers and snowboarders to enjoy every day.

All event times listed are local to Tignes (CET/GMT+1) and subject to change.