There are few guarantees when your business is winter. Even in one of National Geographic’s World's 25 Best Ski Towns, look no further than the nearest window to find the empty account where once we anticipated the open checkbook of La Niña. After the bountiful winter of 2010-11, what we expected were powder days, deep and numerous, a season of frightful storm and blissful adventure.

Well, hold on Bozeman, you’re about to get a night of comeuppance. This year there is one absolutely guaranteed opportunity to relish a powdery feast: The Cold Smoke Awards Ceremony this Saturday night at the Emerson’s Crawford Theatre. A Bozeman original, "an exposition of winter culture," and a grassroots film festival—the CSA ceremony will unfurl before a crowd that answered the call, in the words of one of the emcees, Anjin Herndon,“Get funky, dress like freaks, and let’s go.”

Originally, there were four founders including Herndon, Brad Van Wert, Jonas Grenz, and the man credited with the inspiration, Jeremy Mistretta. In 2003, the Cold Smoke Awards began as a good idea bandied about between three MSU kids and a buddy—just another lofty, idealistic notion that's as common as a 12-pack on campus. Through fortuitous circumstance, good karma, and a dryland farmer's work ethic, the event survived the hangovers and whimsy so characteristic in young men. 

Herndon said that all they wanted was a chance “to showcase our work.” They were looking for an event on a smaller scale than the famous film festivals—Sundance, Banff—and one that focused on winter culture.  Not finding one, the four created their own. “The first year, we were lucky,” Herndon said. Like a match in a pile of brush, the CSAs exploded onto the scene.

“We never did this with the intention of it being an annual event,” Herndon said, “(The CSAs) are more about the right content, the right films.” The organizers have taken seasons off, like last year, but every time, the CSA team has regrouped and retooled. This year, they launched a 10-stop tour of the Rockies, an interactive website loaded with select content, and a bigger, badder ceremony to culminate it all.

Hailing from a little town in southwestern Colorado called Norwood, Herndon first visited Bozeman as a prospective engineering student in June of 2000. “They had fresh snow in the Bridgers,” Herndon said, “I was sold.”

Now 29, he arrived at Rockford for our interview dressed in a mix of rustic yokes and pearl snaps paired with tinted pants and a hoodie. Stylish, I noted, and studied.  After receiving a bachelor’s from the Media and Theatre Arts Department at MSU, Herndon became a self-employed freelance filmmaker. While in Bozeman his primary work is editorial in nature; when on the road, he works more as a cameraman. Herndon’s easily identifiable credits include promotional work with Telluride Mountain Film Festival and The North Face webisodes.

4500 miles—that’s how far the CSA tour went this year to spread the gospel. With key sponsorship from long-time supporters like Big Sky Brewing Company and new friends in the State of Montana’s winter tourism initiative, Anjin and the crew put some serious windshield time on a colorful 2011 Toyota Tundra, lent by the northwest division of Toyota and inked up by SCS Wraps.  The whirlwind CSA tour, Grenz said, was fueled by great filmmakers and "strong Montana brands."

Snapshots from the road-trip include Silverton, Colorado, where it snowed 30 inches the night of the show and “all 150 people in town showed up”; Ketchum, Idaho, home of the oldest ski lift in North America and an exclusive, wealthy enclave sprinkled with speed-flying animals; at Broovies Bar in SLC—“a strong counterculture, very urban, the people were accessible and welcoming”; to ultra-clicky Jackson, WY, of whom Grenz said, “They’d turn away when we’d throw free gear into the crowd.” Herndon summed the range of impressions up, “The mountain culture is about as tribal as it gets.”

Regarding this year’s show, the CSA team has added a couple of bright young faces, Todd Heath of Bomb Snow and Alex Buecking, “a great writer with credits in Powder Magazine and a big help with marketing.” Expect them to the hit the Emerson stage, uhhh, fully loaded.  “It’s the Academy Awards meets Winter Culture,” Herndon said, “and a chance to let your inner freak shine.”

You can also expect that the crowd will be firing high and loud at the Cold Smoke Carnival, an after-party event in the ballroom immediately next to the Emerson's theatre.  Of Winter Womp and J. Wail as well as a semi-secret, top-notch, FX manifestation of the Cold Smoke Awards, all I could get for a forecast from the boisterous Grenz was, "Oh, man..." 

If you know this guy, and a ton of people in Montana do, then that's all the guarantee you need. -TBM

Editor's Note:  Doors at the Emerson's Crawford Theatre will open at 6pm Saturday night with the show starting at 7pm.  We recommend getting tickets in advance at Phd. Skis, Summit Bike & Ski, or Cactus Records.  Tickets are $10 and the after-party "Carnival" is an additional $10. 

Read More Magpie:  ...and if you don't know him, check out "The Conspicuous Illumination of Jonas Grenz."