Dave Rouleau and I made this quick vid for Camp Of Champions a few years ago of Santa doing some post Christmas shredding in Whistler. Looks like he was getting pretty loose and partying hard on the cookies and nog.

*Sorry for the crappy quality vid. I lost the original footy so I had to embed this off my Facebook. Boo.

Happy Holidays.

This fall we got an email from a kid named Joey Eddy who had read our Locals Laps article and figured we needed to check out Sun Peaks Five Mile hit run. Since were we out in Whistler for a few days in December we headed up to Sun Peaks to see what the scene was all about.

*Keep an eye out for the Sun Peaks Locals Laps in the Winter issue.

We met up with some of the Sun Peaks locs who were nice enough to show us around. L to R: Keaton Alexander, Cody Jerome, Lee Quillen, Jason Loeppky (378 Boardshop owner), Gordon Emery, Geremy Guido and terrain park supervisory Toby Lanson.

Joey Eddy and Geremy Guido. Joey was hyped because he got to spend the morning shooting with SBC senior photog Jeff Patterson.

Some nice looking lines I wish we had time to hike.

I didn't see a single other person this whole run. It could have been because it was minus 20 out. After a few minutes my nose went numb. I had to stop three times to try and warm it up. SBC editor Scott Birke got frost bite on his cheek.

After we couldn't hack the cold any more we retired to Bottoms pub for some apres. I'll leave you to contemplate the deeper philosophical meanings of the signage we encountered there.  Thanks to Melanie and Corey from Sun Peaks for hook ups.

If you've ever met Forum team rider Rusty Ockenden you'll definitely know he's his own person--ain't nobody like the Rust. Well maybe there's one other person who bares a likeness.

Maybe weird minds just look alike. Either way they both get it done with their off beat steezs.

So on our second day here in Whistler for planning next year's editorial, John Scarth, Gerhard Gross and I decided to hike to the top of the Peak Chair to see if the snow was still as awesome as it was reported to have been last week.

Nice tourist pose, eh?... When we were hiking up the cat track, these Aussie free-heelers stopped and took our photo... Then a few minutes later, we were at the top, which was pretty much a dead zone and something I'd never experienced before. When do you ever see shit like this?

That's at the top of that cliff on the Peak Chair, right before you get off at the the top. Note the lack of chairs on that... We did a run in Whistler Bowl right after that, while it wasn't all time like it was last week, we still got some nice turns in wind-packed snow, it was incredible since there was no one else in there. Seriously -- no one.

Then after a brief stop at home and a few meetings with photographers Jeff Patterson, Evan Chandler-Sones, Mark Gribbon and writer Feet Banks we met up with the Red Bull crew who was throwing down a night at Sushi Village...

That's Red Bull's Gabe Authier on the right, armed with an Asahi and one of Sushi Vill's signature sake margaritas.

Close up shot...

Left to right—that's me, Gerhard, Scarth and Pete Andersen. (And yeah, those are bottles of Asahi in paper bags. We bought the beers, Dylan Temple gave us the bags.)

And here's Véronique Goulet, Camp of Champions' Fabia Gruber, Marie-France Roy, and Oakley's Ingrid Sirois.

Gabe killing it... After Sushi Village, we were off to BBK's Pub at the base of Blackcomb where Jay Greenway and the legendary Wes Makepeace were playing... Turns out it was a who's who of awesome there...

Here's Jay, who also plays in The Fall of Summer with Mike Calder and Mark Bannock.

Here's Wes Makepeace, and if you've never heard his stuff, check it out here. Awesome.

Awww... it's Priscilla Levac and Crispin Cannon.

... And me and Nix (Chris Nichols, from FourStar Distribution and C1RCA).

We're off to the Whistler Creek Productions's Third Annual Whistler Film Festival Party tonight. If you're in town, come out and meet up with us, and if you're not, check out our photos tomorrow.

Well, we’ve made it to Whistler. After seeing all of our Facebook friends’s posts about how much snow this place was getting surrounding their opening day, we had to get a piece of it ourselves. We’re here meeting with all of Snowboard Canada’s contributors to start planning out next year’s magazine editorial… and to get some riding in at the same time. And as of today, they still haven’t opened up the Peak Chair, which means there’s still lots of snow left up there.

We had a pretty mellow flight from Toronto to Vancouver, (where associate editor Gerhard Gross and I actually scored free beer from our flight attendant because G's in-flight entertainment system kept on crashing, which forced us to watch District 9 on my set, with only one-ear bud each--tough, I know, but at least they had sympathy or succumbed to our jedi-mind tricks).

After getting picked up at the airport by photo editor, John Scarth, we navigated our way through Vancouver’s sketchy East Hastings area (and although I’ve seen it a hundred times, I never quite get used to seeing that volume of poor souls), we finally got to the Monster Energy office, where we were to meet with Dano Pendygrasse and Paul Rak. Their office downtown was actually part of a film set at the time for some TV show called, “A Life Unexpected,” that stars someone named…

This is the front of the Monster Energy office that’s been converted into “Open Bar”… too bad that was just a photo backdrop.

And the Monster Energy Crew in front of said backdrop.

Anyway, we heard rumours that Monster Energy is going to be putting on its own event sometime during the Olympics and wanted to get the story on it. And though they couldn’t totally confirm what’s up until all the details are solidified, they would say that something is will happen, and it’ll likely involve some sort of slopestyle event. Once we get more details, we’ll post them up here.

After lunch it was up to Whistler to the condo we’re staying until Sunday, before heading off to Sun Peaks for a couple days. Here’s the view from the ding/living room:

And a shot from the outside:

It's a really sick place. We're graciously being hosted here by Whistler Dream, who has hooked us up with an awesome three-bedroom, 1360 sq. ft house minutes from the lifts at Montebello At Whistler. Check them out: www.whistlerdream.com. (And for anyone looking for a place to stay in Whistler, our man Charlie from Whistler Dream says that you just have to mention "Snowboard Canada" when you book and they’ll hook you up with a 15 per cent discount on your rental).

Check back here all week for our blog updates...