Click on the Mountain, 2009–2018: The Record of Ten Editions Under Monte Bianco

Click on the Mountain was a ski and snowboard photography contest held in late winter at Courmayeur, in Italy's Aosta Valley, on the Italian flank of Monte Bianco. It ran ten times. The first edition was in 2009; the tenth, from 5 to 10 March 2018, was the last. Each year a small field of professional photographers was invited, each was given riders and a fixed number of days on the mountain, and each handed finished work to a jury on the Saturday, after which the projects were shown in public in the middle of the town.

It almost never repeated exactly. In ten winters the field went from five teams to four, alpine guides were attached to every team, a local rider was written into the roster, a filmer was added, the number of pictures in the book was cut, cut again and then raised, a helicopter was introduced, and the categories the jury judged were replaced wholesale. The chronology below is organised around those changes, because each one records what the organisers had decided the previous version got wrong.

The chain of ordinals, closed

Every edition can be numbered against two independent sources, which matters because the site's own later pages carried stale copy and several second-hand accounts repeated it.

The archived historical rosters label their winning teams outright: winner of the 1st edition for 2009, the 2nd for 2010, the 3rd for 2011. The organisers' release of 22 March 2012 calls that year the fourth; the release of 6 February 2013 calls that year the fifth. discoveryalps.it, on 27 February 2014, calls 2014 the sixth. The event's own live news page for 2015 calls that edition the seventh, and the German magazine skiing.de, on 2 March 2015, independently says the seventh as well. The 2016 news page calls 2016 the eighth. montagna.tv and up-climbing.com, both on 13 March 2017, call 2017 the ninth. ANSA, in an ANSAcom item of 12 March 2018 — branded content produced with the event, citable for results rather than as independent reporting — calls 2018 the tenth, as does Aostasera on 11 March 2018.

One stale ordinal survives. montagna.tv, previewing the 2015 edition on 21 February 2015, called it the sixth, and a 2015-era page on the contest's own site carries the same string. Both are almost certainly teaser copy left over from the previous winter, since that site's day-by-day bulletins from the week itself, and skiing.de's preview, both say seventh.

What changed, and when

Compiled from the contest's archived roster, programme and origins pages (Wayback captures 2013–2021), the organisers' releases of 22 March 2012 and 6 February 2013, discoveryalps.it (27 February 2014), skiing.de (2 March 2015), montagna.tv and up-climbing.com (13 March 2017) and ANSAcom (12 March 2018). Bold marks the year a component first appears. Access changed too: heliski from 2013; Skyway Monte Bianco opened on 30 May 2015, but the 2015 and 2016 programme pages do not name it, and it enters the programme only in 2017, under the asterisk it shares with heliski.

Ten editions, year by year

2009 · Five teams, not four

The first edition did not run to the shape everyone remembers. The archived roster lists five teams, each a photographer with exactly two riders, one on skis and one on a snowboard: Federico Bellini with Aiace Bazzana and Alberto Schiavon; Alessandro Belluscio with Martino Valle and Davide Lantermoz; Marco Spataro with Jacopo Bufacchi and Stefano Pozzolini; Pietro Celesia with Emanuele Gex and Giacomo Rey; and Vasco Coutino with Stefano Gex and Kalle Frassy. No alpine guide is named against any of the five. The roster marks Coutino's team as winner of the first edition, and the Albo d'Oro on the old PHP site records the same name against 2009. The book ran to thirty photographs — a figure recoverable only in retrospect, from the 2012 release that announced its reduction. No published source located here gives the dates the first edition was held.

2010 · The guide joins the team

The field drops to four and stays there for the remaining nine years. Two things appear on the 2010 roster that were absent in 2009: a third rider on every team, and a named alpine guide against every squad — Luca Blanchet, Mario Mochet, Gianluca Marra and Francesco Civra Dano. The guide is not a late safety bolt-on; it arrives in year two. It does not run unbroken from there. The archived rosters name a guide against every team for 2010 and again from 2014 onward, while the 2011, 2012 and 2013 team pages name a photographer and riders only, and the archive does not say whether that is a change in the format or a gap in pages rebuilt several times. The photographers were Davide Lantermoz, Sylvain Barneron, Richard Felderer and Cristian Scalco, and the roster marks Scalco's team — Stefano Gex, Jacopo Thomain, Kalle Frassy, with Civra Dano guiding — as winner of the second edition. No dates for 2010 are given by any source located here.

2011 · The one year the public voted

The third edition ran from 22 to 26 March 2011; neveitalia.it, publishing Andrea Giordan's book on 30 March 2011, gives both the ordinal and the dates. Four teams competed, led by Alessandro Belluscio, Andrea Giordan — spelled Jordan on the contest's own roster page — Laurent Salino and Federico Bellini. Belluscio won. What makes 2011 unlike every other year is that the homepage of the time carried a public online vote with a running leaderboard: Belluscio first, Giordan second, Bellini third. No later edition put any part of the result in public hands that way; from 2012 the decision belongs to a jury in a room.

2012 · Thirty photographs become twenty

The fourth edition ran from 27 to 31 March 2012, and it is the first year the organisers changed the brief on the record and said why. Their release of 22 March 2012 announced that the book handed to the jury would be twenty photographs rather than the thirty of previous editions, the stated reason being that fewer frames would let photographers and riders spend more time building each one. The same release widened the shooting ground beyond the freeride area to the Vallée Blanche, the Val Ferret and the Chécrouit–Val Veny sector, and told the field the jury would weigh the artistic side of the book as heavily as the difficulty of the riding, with jibbing, jumps and freestyle attitude named explicitly. The four photographers — Pietro Celesia, Davide Lantermoz, Flo Smith and Giorgio De Vecchi — each came from a different freeski or snowboard title. Celesia won.

2013 · Heliski, and a local in every team

The fifth edition ran from 25 February to 2 March 2013, and two changes arrive together. The organisers' release of 6 February 2013 presents heliski as the edition's headline addition, a way to put teams quickly onto snow nobody had crossed. And every team now carries a designated local rider: skiing.de, on 20 February 2013, names all four and identifies each as a Courmayeur instructor: Giacomo Rey, Jacopo Thomain and Giacomo Perri on snowboard, Martino Valle on skis. The photographers were Roman Lachner, Richard Felderer, Louis Garnier and Alessandro Belluscio. Felderer won; the jury's published motivation praises the breadth of situations in the book and the handling of the night frames. The award was made at the Jardin de l'Ange on 2 March, with a selection projected outdoors along via Roma.

2014 · A tie, and a seat won online

The sixth edition ran under a title sponsor, as the Killer Loop Click on the Mountain by Courmayeur Mont Blanc, and closed on Saturday 1 March. Its start is given as 24 February by boardsportsPR.com on 25 January 2014 and as 25 February by bergstolz.de on 18 February 2014; discoveryalps.it records the teams being presented on Monday 24 February. Three photographers were invited and the fourth seat was opened to anyone, professional or amateur, through an online portfolio contest hosted by the freeski title downdays.eu; it went to the German photographer Marius Schwager. That bergstolz.de piece is a preview, written a week before the edition opened, and it sets out the three shooting days as one in each of Courmayeur's two lift-served sectors, Cresta d'Arp and Punta Helbronner, and one in the backcountry by helicopter — a plan announced in advance, not a report of what happened, and one that names a terrace which could not be reached that winter, since the Rifugio Torino–Punta Helbronner section of the Funivia dei Ghiacciai was shut for the Skyway works from April 2012 until the new installation opened on 30 May 2015. The result was the only tie in ten years: discoveryalps.it, on 4 March 2014, reports that seven judges from across Europe could not separate Tero Repo and Daniel Rönnbäck and split the €4,000 first prize between them. Schwager took Best Ski Photo and Tim Lloyd Best Snowboard Photo — a credit the contest's own later 2014 page contradicts by attaching Best Snowboard Photo to Rönnbäck's team.

2015 · Wind, trees, and thirty minutes of flight

The seventh edition ran from 3 to 7 March 2015, per skiing.de on 2 March 2015; the contest's own front page that season printed 3–8 March, and its programme page puts the briefing on Tuesday 3 March and the awards on Saturday 7 March. The wild-card seat went to Lorenzo Rieg. The event's own bulletins for that week are unusually specific about conditions: cloud on the first shooting day, upper lifts closed by wind on the second so that teams worked among the woods of the Val Veny, and a clear, windless third day given over to the helicopter, each team allotted thirty minutes of flight time. Klaus Polzer's team won — Niki Salencon, Flo Orley, Raffaele Cusini, with Jimmy Sesana guiding — and the jury published its criteria: creativity, post-production, composition, the standard of the riding, and the idea behind the book as a whole.

2016 · The Video Edition

The eighth edition ran from 29 February to 5 March 2016 and is the largest single change in the format's history. A filmer joined every team, and the hand-in was rebuilt around moving pictures: five photographs and an edit of up to 120 seconds. The judged categories were replaced at the same time, from the freeride, jibbing, freestyle and creativity language of the early years to the set that stands for the rest of the run — action, lifestyle, street and light effect. ANSA's Aosta Valley desk carried on 7 March 2016 that Roby Bragotto took the best photograph, of the rider Tom Klocker; JR Ceron the best video, with Tof Henry, Loic Deschamps and Lodovico Guichardaz; and Borja Azurmendi the best Instagram image, with Domi Rhyner and Sämi Ortlieb. That last award matters for the chronology: Monster Energy, the event's sponsor, wrote on 8 March 2016 that the teams delivered a fifteen-second Instagram edit alongside the photographs and the video — placing that component a year earlier than the contest's own 2016 programme page, whose prize list names six awards and no Instagram category.

2017 · Ten photographs, and a difficult week

The ninth edition ran from 6 to 11 March 2017 with the slogan Don't go crazy, be creative. The photographic book came back up to ten frames, alongside a video of about 120 seconds and an Instagram edit given as thirty seconds by both up-climbing.com and montagna.tv on 13 March 2017. Both record that the week ran in poor weather and that the teams worked with guides from the Società delle Guide Alpine di Courmayeur; the mayor of Courmayeur, Fabrizia Derriard, was quoted by montagna.tv calling it one of the most complex weeks of the season for avalanche-risk management, and saying caution, responsibility and competence had not been in conflict with creativity — a mayor's assessment, reported as hers and not adopted here as a technical judgement. Florian Breitenberger took Best Photo and Best Lifestyle; Lukas Riedl Best Video; Marius Schwager Best Light Effect; and Roberto Bragotto both Best Action and Best Street, an account he has published himself. The two outlets disagree on one award: montagna.tv credits the Best Instagram Video to Tom Klocker and up-climbing.com to Lukas Riedl. Both are Team 4.

2018 · The tenth, and the last

The tenth edition ran from 5 to 10 March 2018 under the theme Curiosity & Freedom. The team shrank for the first time since 2010 — photographer, filmer and two professional riders rather than three — and montagna.tv, on 7 March 2018, singled out the presence of two women riders — naming the Italian Giulia Monego — as the edition's novelty; the contest's own team page gives the second as the Canadian Sophie Lechasseur. The awards, made at the Maserati Mountain Lounge on the Saturday evening, went to Klaus Polzer for Best Photo with Monego and Lechasseur, Sebastian Oden Sandblad for Best Video with William Larsson and Erik Lundmark, Florian Albert for Best Instagram Video, Adam Klingeteg for Best Action with Larsson, and Polzer again for Best Lifestyle with Lechasseur and for Best Light Effect with Lechasseur and Monego. The remaining photographic prize is named Best Street Shot on the contest's own winners page and Best Urban by both ANSAcom and mountainblog.it; the winner is Klingeteg with Lundmark either way. The jury's published motivation for the winning photograph praised its dynamism, its contrast and its light. Nothing further was published on the site after this edition.

The roll of honour

2009–2013 from the Albo d'Oro and the winner labels on the archived roster pages; 2014 from discoveryalps.it, 4 March 2014; 2015 from the contest's own results bulletin; 2016 from ANSA, 7 March 2016; 2017 from montagna.tv and up-climbing.com, 13 March 2017; 2018 from the contest's winners page, ANSAcom and mountainblog.it, March 2018. From 2016 the top award was split between photography and film, so two names are given for each of the last three years.

How long a team actually had

The number that ought to be simplest is the least stable thing in the record. The organisers' English pages repeatedly say 72 hours, and skiing.de, ANSA and Monster Energy used that figure in 2015 and 2016. Wall Street International Magazine, previewing the fourth edition in Italian on 27 February 2012, said eighty-four hours across three shooting days. For the 2018 edition alone there are four further figures: montagna.tv, on 7 March, said 96 hours inside a week; ANSAcom described four days of alternating sun, storm and cloud while also saying the teams had a week; prime-skiing.de, on 16 March, said four days; mountainblog.it, on 13 March, said five.

They are counting different things — the week spent in Courmayeur, the block from the Monday briefing to the Saturday delivery, and the days on which shooting was permitted. The published programmes for 2016 and 2017 agree on the last: a Monday briefing, shooting Tuesday to Thursday, Friday given to media, editing and rest, delivery and awards on Saturday. Only the 2016 page puts an hour on the briefing, 19.30 at the Sunny Side Café; 2017 and 2018 give none. The 2018 programme keeps that shape and then contradicts itself: it marks Friday 9 March as free shooting as well as media day and editing day, while the same page's free-shooting block lists Tuesday to Thursday only and its awards entry still speaks of three days of shooting. Whether the tenth edition had three shooting days or four, the archive does not settle. The 2015 programme, uniquely, puts the briefing on the Tuesday and the shooting on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Three shooting days is what the schedules support in every surviving year up to 2017. For 2018 the same page says both three and four, and prime-skiing.de's four is what counting that Friday would give. Every other number in circulation is a different bracket drawn around the same short block.

Where the record goes quiet

Several things a reader might expect to find are not there, and it is more useful to say so than to reconstruct them.

The jurors are almost entirely anonymous. Across ten editions the panels are described as experts in sport and imaging and hardly ever named. Two years are exceptions. discoveryalps.it gives the 2014 panel a size — seven judges from across Europe — and a head, Sebastian Huber, who appears in that role again in Monster Energy's account of 2016. And prime-skiing.de, on 16 March 2018, names the film producer Karim Bartoletti and the event's originator Manuel Castelnuovo, a snowboard specialist, sitting together in Courmayeur while a selected jury delivered its verdict online, after long argument over the placings. For every other year the record gives motivations without signatures.

Dates for the first two editions have not been recoverable from any source located here, and the archived roster pages for 2011, 2012 and 2013 list no alpine guides, which may be a real change or simply a gap in pages rebuilt several times. Names are spelled inconsistently between the contest's Italian and English pages and between those pages and the press — Giordan and Jordan, Schwager and Schwaiger, Rönnbäck and Ronnback, Käppeli and Kaeppeli — and where a variant is known it has been recorded rather than quietly corrected. The English-language pages are the least reliable documents in the set: one of them describes the 2018 deliverable as a 120-minute video.

Ten annual editions ran, from 2009 to 2018. There is no public record of an eleventh. No source located for this page states a reason for the end, and this publication does not have one to offer.