The Season's Best Photos

Eddie Clark

Every year, dozens of mountain bikers head to Valdez, Alaska, to ride steep, snow-covered slopes at the Chugach Fat Bike Bash. Last March, Clark joined them and encountered two feet of fresh powder, below-zero temperatures, and 50-mile-per-hour wind gusts. Despite the harsh conditions, Clark followed mountain bikers Andrew Taylor and Noah Brousseau to Solomon Lake, where they were sheltered from the gales. “You can see the wind whipping snow off the peaks in the background,” says the 47-year-old photographer. “I was trying to bring in an element of the weather and give a sense of how big the terrain was.”

The Tools: Nikon D500, 16–80mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 200, f/8, 1/2,500 second

Mikey Gribbin

Last fall, Gribbin and his girlfriend, Emily Erickson, were road-tripping to Seattle from their home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, when they decided to detour to Big Four Mountain in Washington’s Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest to explore the area’s ever transforming ice caves. The caverns are created by massive piles of avalanche debris, which collect at the base of the mountain each winter and are carved out by warm summer winds. “I wanted to capture how big they were,” the 25-year-old photographer says. Signs warn hikers of falling ice, but Gribbin couldn’t help but venture inside. “I had Emily stand at the opening, and I ran to the back to take a few shots. Then I got out of there.”

The Tools: Canon 5D Mark III, 24–70mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 250, f/2.8, 1/80 second

Jessica Brownlow

In November of 2016, in the skies above Eloy, Arizona, 65 women jumped out of three planes, linked hands, and set the world record for the largest all-female, headfirst, group skydiving formation—which is even more difficult than it sounds. It took the women 16 tries, each time from 18,000 feet, braving temperatures down to minus 13 degrees while falling at terminal velocity. Just after sunrise on the fourth day, with a weather system moving in, they finally succeeded, holding hands for 8.5 seconds before an altimeter alarm sounded in their ears, indicating that it was time to break apart and deploy their parachutes. Brownlow captured fellow jumper Magali Braff and 12 other women on her GoPro seconds after exiting the plane. “It was a really cool moment, looking across the formation,” the skydiver from Oakland, California, says. “A kind of calmness came over everyone as we linked together.”

The Tools: GoPro Hero5 Black with Cookie G3 mount, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/1,400 second