Pristine snow sculptures are so blasé. Any town in Switzerland or Canada can display gleaming structures hand-carved to perfection. To really set our inaugural festival apart, organizers opted for a, ahem, grittier take: the plow piles at Super 1. What might the world’s best winter sculptors conjure around the mingled layers of dirt, empty drink cups, and lost beanies? How will they adapt their designs for that miserable mid-February week of rain? Who will be the first to say, “This is just too disgusting, I can’t work under these conditions”? Get your season pass to the Sculpture Park and watch the drama unfold.

Is your summer festival hat lonely, or still covered in the dirt from a field near Edgewood? Here’s a chance to dust it off for a few days of, well, not quite as much fun as you had in July. Under the Grey Sky is a winter concert series of contemporary melancholy, tuned to the same minor key as your seasonal affective disorder. Careful which puffy you bring, as bonfire embers might put holes in it. But the heat will really ratchet up when you see Orville Peck in fringed ski goggles.

Are you known for leaving your mark, with a flourish? Can you sign your signature in the snowbanks? Sign up for our Pee Penmanship competition! Running concurrently with the insufficient porta-potties at Under the Grey Sky, this contest calls to the 5-year-old in each of us. Divisions by gender and age keep things fair; the word on the street is that judges will give bonus points for serif fonts. (May be postponed in the event of midwinter rain.)

Ice dance joined the World Figure Skating Championships in 1952 and the Olympic Games as a medal sport in 1976. In 2022, this lively whirl of costume and gleaming blades comes to our favorite local skating rink: Russ’s Street on Big Mountain. Outdoor ice dance is rare, as it’s difficult to maintain a sufficiently icy surface in the natural world, but fortunately our local ski hill comes through. The long, slippery trip back to Chair 1 offers plenty of time to watch the pros in action while you contemplate why you didn’t just stay on the backside for another run. Be sure to alert contestants before you try to pass—they’ll be docked points if their twizzles fizzle to avoid a collizzle.