Sage Cattabriga-Alosa
He was twenty-years old, had never left the lower forty-eight and was a dishwasher in Alta living life as an average ski bum when this wild-haired Wyoming native woke up as a world-traveling pro skier. Sage Cattabriga-Alosa, in addition to gracing this year's Reader Poll for the first time, was presented with the POWDER Video Award for Best Male Performance for his role in High Life. The film shows Cattabriga-Alosa teasing 3,000-foot pitches, carving avalanche prone peaks, and flashing vertical lines while performing precision new-school tricks. With this award, Sage fulfills one step in the destiny that was laid out for him at last year's POWDER Video Awards, where he was named the 2003 Breakthrough Performer

As a kid Cattabriga-Alosa grew up in Grand Targhee, Wyoming, where his race coach Pete Jenkins remembers that everything in Sage's life revolved around his love of skiing-waxing his skis at night instead of going out, begging his neighbors for rides to the mountain, and working extra hours for ski funds. Jenkins describes Sage as "humble and passionate." "At a fairly early age was one of the best and hardest charging skiers on the mountain," Jenkins says. "He was like a sponge hungry for skiing. He had a vision and he stuck with it."

Sarah Burke
In addition to being voted number one in this year's POWDER Reader Poll, Sarah Burke wins the POWDER Video Award for Best Female Performance. As the only woman in the Plehouse Production, Exact Science, Burke raises the bar for women skiers. She delivers a segment packed with technical moves, including tricks never before landed by a female.

After years of competing successfully against men in events such as the U.S. Open of Freeskiing, and harassing X Games organizers to give women equal slope rights, Burke was given the chance last season to compete in the first ever Global X Games Superpipe for women. Taking home the gold, her performance helped set the stage for the first ever Winter X Games Women's Superpipe Demo. At age 21 the slopestyle and pipe master is on the leading edge of women's freestyle. In the coming years Burke plans on bringing her jib skills to bigger, natural terrain, a move that would undoubtedly secure her place as one of the top female skiers of the decade.