As we all know, snow can be your best friend, or your worst nightmare. Such is the case for Bennett Bacon, who benefited from Team Gravy Train's $1,500 as the first-place winner Friday afternoon in the fourth annual Snowflake Challenge.

Bacon was one of the graveyard-shift snowcat groomers at Breckenridge Ski Resort, but he recently crashed his snowboard into a tree and laid in a hospital in critical condition for two weeks with internal bleeding, two broken legs and a shattered pelvis. When his coworkers heard about the Snowflake Challenge, they decided to enter in hopes of earning some cash for Bacon.

“Everyone showed up to help and seemed to say, ‘Oh I don't know how to carve snow,' and then ended up adding ideas or a bunch of detail to our piece,” said team captain Kyle Howatineck.

Cumulatively, the team invested about 95 hours into the winning piece: a “stone” fireplace, with logs stacked on one side, huge bowed presents on the other, next to a fat, ornate Christmas tree, all placed on a neatly groomed “brick floor.”

“When we started seeing the other sculptures take shape, we knew we had to step it up,” Howatineck said.

Not only will the $1,500 help Bacon pay his medical bills, but also, as people walked by the sculpture as Bacon's buddies worked, they told passers-by about the challenge and collected a few donations.

The remaining challenge

Three local judges choose four top teams out of 17 this year in Breckenridge. Second place, Team Wagner Designs took home $1,000 for a delicately balanced piece of a graceful figure emerging from another winged one; third place, Team Snow Caps at Paragon Lodging garnered $500, with a woolly mammoth wrapping its long nose around its baby; and fourth place, Team Fatty's grabbed $250 with its depiction of an oversized hand sporting a meticulously carved snowflake between its thumb and forefinger. In addition, Breckenridge Associates Real Estate and the three judges pledged extra money to give $100 to two “honorable mention” teams: Team CrossFit Breckenridge and Team Ready, Paint, Fire!

“We were very impressed by the effort and the creativity this year,” judge Ken Miller said. “Teams had to work extra hard and be committed to the idea due to a lack of snow on Main Street.”

The Snowflake Challenge grew out of a desire to bring a grassroots, casual feel back to the art of snow sculpting. The Breckenridge Resort Chamber, Breckenridge Associates Real Estate, Coors Tap the Rockies, The Summit Daily News and KSMT Radio sponsor the Challenge, which Rob Neyland, Ron Shelton and Tom Day started. The three men have competed on and off as Team Breck in the International Snow Sculpture Championships, which celebrates its 22nd year in January, but they have watched it grow so intensely competitive, they wanted to create a new competition in which locals could participate — and excel, said spokesperson Kelly Smith of Breckenridge Associates.

Still, with the low entry fee — $25 for an unlimited group number of private residents and $75 for a business — and high prize money — the Snowflake Challenge consistently has drawn 14-17 teams that, quite honestly, have kicked some butt. Though they might be a little slow starting off — Smith says though teams have a week to sculpt, “the first couple days, no one does anything; everyone has a hard time taking the first step,” many end up with amazing feats of frozen art created in approximately 24 hours.

Ready, Paint, Fire! was a bit ahead of the curve. The team of eight spent two eight-hour days driving a trailer up and down to Hooiser Pass, hauling snow to their site — a scenario much different than last year, when snow filled the streets of Breckenridge. As of late Thursday afternoon, they had a 7-foot-tall, 7-foot-long, 4-foot-wide dragon mostly roughed in and planned to stay up until at least 2 a.m. Friday creating eight little creatures and finishing the dragon, partially out of necessity, and partially to protect their art piece from drunken rabble-rousers looking for a fight with a dragon, or other frozen oddities they might go bump with in the night; last year, one of the sculptures became a casualty of late-night activity.

Most teams work all night, Smith said, so Breckenridge Associate team members make a “shot run” to keep sculptors on their toes.

“(The shot) definitely does keep you a little bit warm,” said Chris List, of the Ready, Paint, Fire! Team.

His team learned a lot from their first experience last year, particularly in terms of packing snow and carving technique, he said.

Unlike the International Snow Sculpture Championships, anything goes in this challenge, including using paint and structural support.

“I don't think we take it as seriously (as the international competition),” List said. “It's just fun. It's just a great challenge. I love that the town does it.”

At 3 p.m. Friday, three judges, Miller, Gary Soles and Greg Gutski, picked the best sculptures based on completion, creativity and artistic impact. Each judge has firm footing in the International Snow Sculpture Championships: For several years, Miller was the event coordinator and technical manager for the International Snow Sculpture Championships; Soles is a local artist and owner of The Photo Shop and has supported the Snow Sculpture Championships since its inception, and Gutski is currently the technical manager and coordinator for international competition.