Is there any more delightful sight than a sandbox full of kids out of their minds on fun? Simply substitute sugar snow for sand to get an idea of the level of mayhem on offer at the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival in Whistler, April 13 to 22.

That’s just the spring-fever vibe that Kevin Sansalone seeks to stoke. Since winning the inaugural Westbeach Classic snowboard big air at 1998’s WSSF, the Mount Seymour–bred rider has worked (as a member of the WSSF advisory board) to pinpoint local talent for inclusion in subsequent festival contests. “I wasn’t even invited that first year but came as an alternate when someone else dropped out,” he recalled over the phone from his home in Whistler. “And I won! Nowadays, as a filmmaker, I meet a lot of up-and-coming kids. When it’s time to select talent for the next festival, I always want to help out young riders.”

If big-air contests are serious fun augmented with a big payday, the Mogul Duel, one of four Shred Show snowboard events featured in the 10-day festival, offers a delirious flip side. “Riders get to do stuff like racing through gates and off jumps that snowboarders don’t do anymore. We’ve brought this spirit back to the festival and allowed the average Joe to go from being a spectator to being a participant. It’s all about friends and fun.”

To add further spice to this dish of pleasure, the Whistler-based Camp of Champions will once again inflate its massive cube-shaped air bag near the Shred Show and World Skiing Invitational AFP World Championship venues on Blackcomb Mountain. A hit at last year’s festival, the air bag guarantees amateur skiers and snowboarders a soft landing after lifting skyward off a jump and practising manoeuvres like the pros. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss: “If you never tried, you should. To air out is fun, and fun is good.”

One competitor coming back to earth after a season-long string of podium finishes is slopestyle snowboarder Spencer O’Brien. When reached at her North Vancouver home, O’Brien sounded disappointed that women were not invited to participate in the Ticket to Ride World Snowboard Tour–sanctioned Shred Show. “I’m not sure why we’re being left out,” said the winner of this year’s TTR championships. If, as anticipated, next year’s WSSF incorporates some new global X Games competitions (to be called Global X) into its lineup, O’Brien, who won a silver medal at the Winter X Games’ slopestyle contest in France last month, seemed sure that this year’s omission will be corrected. “The X Games does an amazing job. Organizers treat women really well, including awarding us equal prize money with the men.” For his part, Sansalone expressed amazement that no women were invited to the Shred Show and supported the prospect of the X Games coming to Whistler. “A win at one of those ESPN-televised shows means a real kickoff for an athlete’s career. It will be tougher to get in, but I’ll lobby hard for local talent.”

Although it’s hard to stop carving turns on sunlit afternoons, especially atop the four metres of snow that spring storms dropped recently, slopeside action is just one facet of the festival. Once chairlifts and gondolas quiet for the day, a bouquet of arts and musical presentations blossom on outdoor concert stages and within the resort’s conference centre and nightclubs.

A common thread running back to the WSSF’s early years, when it debuted as a celebration of technical skiing, is the elevated level of free-wheeling talent on offer. Long-standing crowd pleasers such as the 72 Hour Filmmaker Showdown and Pro Photographer Showdown sell out, predictably.

Others—such as the worldwide idea-sharing phenomenon of PechaKucha Night, which features the informal showing of 20 hand-picked images projected at 20-second intervals and accompanied by ad-libbed commentaries—are steadily building a following of creative fans. “This is our third time at the festival,” PechaKucha organizer Aki Kaltenbach told the Straight by phone. “Unlike some of the other events with big prizes, PechaKucha nights are content-, not profit-, driven. I curate the presenters, such as Vancouver’s Dave “Uncle Weed” Olson, and keep things as diverse as possible, like a box of chocolates. And it’s not all about snow sports by any means.”

Unlike urban PechaKuchas (Japanese for the sound of chitchat), Kaltenbach suggested that the Maxx Fish lounge in Whistler’s Village Square offers a more intimate ambience. “The club only holds 200 people, so by nature it’s a more interactive experience than for the thousand-plus attendees in Vancouver [as with previous nights at the Vogue Theatre]. Audience members can chat up their favourites at beer break.”

A newcomer at this year’s WSSF is the Mountain Culture Variety Show, a fundraiser in support of the Spearhead Huts Project. Committee chair Jayson Faulkner spoke by phone with the Straight about the nonprofit initiative led by the Whistler and Vancouver sections of the Alpine Club of Canada, the B.C. Mountaineering Club, as well as two memorial funds, to create a trio of alpine huts in the horseshoe-shaped valley bookended by Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. The proposed huts would augment an existing shelter in Garibaldi Provincial Park’s Singing Pass region.

“A huge majority of people have already spoken in favour of our plan to B.C. Parks,” Faulkner asserted. “Bon vivant Mitchell Scott is going to MC the evening. He’s worth the price of admission alone, plus we’ll be using the same state-of-the-art audio-visual setup as the [festival] showdowns to give people a chance to see images of the Spearhead [Range] in all its glory.”

Okay: now everyone into the sandbox.