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...