And now… get ready for the 2018 Dew Tour Experience

Now that the 2017 Dew Tour is a wrap, it’s already time to start planning your 2018 return. Here’s why: the week around Dew Tour in Breckenridge has grown into one of the biggest events on the calendar for the ski and snowboard community, and not just because of the elite-level pro competitions on the mountain.

The annual Powder Magazine Powder Awards ceremony, recognizing outstanding performances across the ski industry and the best ski movies of the year, has become a Dew Tour tradition. So has the annual TransWorld SNOWboarding Riders Poll Awards ceremony, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary with an epic bash in 2018. Both events attract some of the biggest names in action sports, from up-and-coming athletes to outright legends, and have grown into can’t-miss parties for fans from around the world.

Live concerts by world-famous artists have been a Dew Tour tradition since the action sports festival’s earliest roots in 2005. This year’s acts, The Floozies and Anomalie, packed the Riverwalk Center in downtown Breckenridge on Saturday night. Legendary after-parties also have a tendency to spring up all over Breckenridge, a town steeped in ski and snowboard history: there’s a scene happening at every single bar and restaurant in Breckenridge every single night when the Dew Tour is in town.

The fan-centered Dew Tour Experience zone, where partners and sponsors give out all kinds of free swag and create meet-and-greet opportunities for fans to collect autographs and pose for pics with their favorites skiers and riders, is another Dew Tour tradition that goes all the way back to the beginning. This year, as an example, fans were able to meet with Snowboard Superpipe gold medalist and Team Toyota athlete Chloe Kim in Toyota’s space in the Dew Tour Experience zone on the day after her win, which guaranteed her spot on the U.S. Olympic Snowboard Team headed to the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games. Two months from now she’ll almost certainly be an Olympic gold medalist – don’t miss NBC’s Olympics coverage from the Women’s Halfpipe Finals at South Korea’s Phoenix Snow Park on February 13 – so go ahead and get those autographs framed, kids. You heard it here first.

New technology has made the fan experience more interactive than ever, thanks to the Dew Tour app, live-streaming video and results, and the Dew Tour’s social media channels. In 2017, fans were able to participate in the Mountain Dew Social Store, an on-mountain Instagram scavenger hunt, to earn points good for Dew Tour merch and other gear and goods, as well as a variety of activities and rewards from Dew Tour partners like Toyota, U.S. Army, STANLEY, Verizon, and Motorola. For fans who can’t make it to Breckenridge – get on that, really – the app and website offer live coverage of all of the contests.

Oh, yeah, and speaking of the contests: Dew Tour’s ski and snowboard competitions are the absolute highlight, and fans win on every front. All events are completely free to spectators, and affordable VIP packages offer premium viewing zones, Dew Tour merch, and other perks. The Dew Tour now includes men’s and women’s ski and snowboard Slopestyle and Superpipe competitions and in-town Streetstyle contests, as well as men’s and women’s Snowboard Banked Slalom racing presented by Toyota and organized by Adaptive Action Sports, an official U.S. Paralympic Sport Club. In Olympic and Paralympic seasons like this one, all of the Dew Tour’s individual events double as U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team qualifiers for the American athletes. Dew Tour is now also known for its Team Challenge events, pitting groups of athletes representing the ski and snowboard industries’ most iconic brands against each other in different disciplines and offering a unique way for fans to see the top pros push the limits of what’s possible.