With temperatures of -24° Celcius and 70 km/h winds, an innocent MountainZone.com reporter froze his butt off today while taking pictures of boardercross racing in Sölden, Austria. What a pity.

Since the conditions were not appropriate for human beings, the boardercross time trials were cancelled today, but the straight jump took place on the glacier here at Sölden. No time trials for the boardercross guys today. And at the moment, nobody knows if the time trials will happen tomorrow.

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But anyway, the day started out a little differently than most. Waking up in the Burton house was a quite nice and sweet treat. At around 10am everybody was still in bed and the snowflakes were falling. Another day like this? Oh, no, the riders got ready for the straight jump. When I put my thumb out to hitch a ride up to the glacier (my car has a low battery and summer tires) I was thinking that I would be late for the time trials. But lucky for me and my hitch hike friend Drew (former Editor of ONBOARD magazine), some nice chicks stopped. Satu Jarvella pulled over in her fat car with Nicole Angelrath and Anne Molin Kongsgaard, as well as Caroline Ehrenstrasser. When we arrived, pretty much every boardercrosser was in the restaurant and ready to go. Alas, it was still storming and there would be no trials.

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In the straight jump, the skiers came along and pulled some sick tricks, landing 540°s fakie. They were trying all kinds of moves. On the snowboarding side it was Jonas Emery, Sierre (French part of Switzerland) local, who took the $2,450 home. Good for him and Stefan Gimpl, Easy Division member out of Austria, who took 2nd. Bret Carpentier, out of Montreal, Canada, also went big and finished 3rd. They really gave it up and Jonas stuck a huge backside rodeo. Because of the cold weather, everybody pretty much stayed in the restaurant.

When I went back to the Burton house I saw Trevor Andrew again, who was still sleeping. That was around 4pm and he blamed it on the jet lag but I would blame Jack Harrer's youngest daughter. Also Michi Albin spent some quality hours with us and his girlfriend. He cared little about the kicker, the weather and the rest.

If the winter goes on like this, we will not be able to use our electric wires anymore. And we are going to die, if the heaters stop working. For us, it is just the Armageddon — now.

— Nils, MountainZone.com European Correspondent