The World Heli Challenge is an out and out freeride competition that attracts all sorts of rugged big mountain types to the backcountry around Wanaka, New Zealand. The event has been running for a while now and has attracted some big names in the ski and snowboard world over the years such as Travis Rice (who won the event back in 2010) and Jeremy Jones. This year, the WHC is partnering with Ion cameras (basically one of the many GoPro spin-offs) to bring an interesting new aspect to the competition. From what we can gather from the rather long winded press release, WHC filmers and athletes will use the new ‘HD Sports Video Camera with WiFi PODZ’ to shoot the event, and broadcast the footage to the web as it is being shot. After the competition goes down, 6 cinematographers will each produce a 5-minute edit with the footage to show the event through their eyes.

It all sounds a bit techy but pretty rad at the same time and is surely some indication of the way that coverage of events is likely headed in the coming years. We had a taste of it at the RedBull Supernatural with all of the POV footage and in the future we’re predicting lots more live streams, live POV footage interspersed with other footage and all in full, glorious High Definition, naturally.