This day was special and is still especially cold in my memory. Here in Sölden, Austria the situation looks as it always did. The first cars already left for the glacier. It is a 25-minute ride up there, but if you don't hurry in the morning, you end up in the stress and hustle traffic jam at 8:30 with all the other guys trying to get first tracks. The sky was painted blue, and as long as you stayed inside, the view gave you a fat smile. As soon as you left the house, however, the situation changed. The -20º C in your face made it look different, believe me.

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I had to hitch a ride again this morning. The guy who picked me up was from Köln, Germany, and he was driving this '85 Volkswagen bus. The chains were too small and the car pretty weak for the steep drive. We were going 20 km/h with loose chains and summer tires and it took us 45 minutes. In previous years I have seen several accidents on this road but I had to stick with this guy since he was alone.

Noon arrived. The sky was nice and blue and I could see the sun but couldn't feel it. Half a million people were waiting to go up so I took the Press short cut. Twenty minutes later I was at the boardercross course. The temperatures were around -35º and the riders looked stiff. My digital camera froze as soon as I pulled it from my pocket. I revived it by holding it up to the heater. The photographers and spectators stood in a tight group. There are certain occasions when you start to NOT care about the breath of other people standing close to you, since your frozen nose won't work for two hours anyway. This was one of those times.

"Delerue is a really nice Frenchy who I think will rock in these comps. A former Junior World Champion in Duel, he is multi-talented and won boardercross today on a freestyle board and soft boots...."

Before the race I met Martin Freinademetz changing clothes in the riders' tent. I asked him if he was going this morning (the time trials started at 9am). "All I can say is COLD," he said. Ten minutes later I heard from my girlfriend that Martin won the time trials, and that meant an extra-respect bonus.

There isn't really a wax for temperatures like these. You might go faster than your competitors but that's still really slow. Let's put it this way, on a normal day you would ride double the speed. For me, the snow said "don`t make a run, you idiot." Besides, my freestyle bindings are broken. But it was fascinating to see so many beginner skiers and snowboarders on the slope. (P.S.: Bones also brake pretty easily at these temperatures!)

Then everything went pretty quickly. There were no loser's rounds, so if you were not in the top three (out of the six people per run) you could go home, more or less. No one had a reason to be up there, except for the tourists who paid. Then, while I was interviewing Tor Bruserud, the snowcat that he was supposed to be on left without him. All my fault. I had to convince the next snowcat driver to take him down. But he didn`t speak English and could not understand how serious the situation was. Live TV almost had to wait for Bruserud, who was in the final heat. It was a really sketchy situation. So I told the snowcat driver that it would be his fault if Tor was late and off he went. Lucky me.

Bruserud finished 2nd behind Mr. Xavier Delerue (FRA). Delerue is a really nice Frenchy who I think will rock in these comps. A former Junior World Champion in Duel, he is multi-talented and won the boardercross today on a freestyle board and soft boots. Respect for that. Martin Freinademetz from Austria took 3rd.

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Now it's Sunday morning. We went to bed last night around midnight. Everyone was looking like these Himalaya dudes and they were only talking about the temperature. That's all they were saying. Isn`t that a funny disease? Only talking bad about a day of -20º. There is so much you can do on a day like this.

This morning we tried to get my car going again, since I had to be in Innsbruck to send this final mail to the office. It hadn't started for three days but I thought it would entertain us this morning. And it did. We worked for about an hour on getting the machine working: hot-wiring, then hot-wiring again. Then the strip ripped; that took another 10 minutes to fix. Finally it started.

Thinking about this weekend, I have the feeling that Sölden in November will be nothing for me anymore. November is always a crappy month to do stuff on the glacier!! But if you are seriously addicted, you probably don't listen to weak words like these. If you are one of this species, then go to Sölden in November.

— Nils, MountainZone.com European Correspondent