With Our fearless leader Mark Sullivan on the East Coast at the US Open , Editor Jeff Baker and sales genius Lucky Lopez at the O'neill Verbier Xtreme , Art Direcror Aaron Draplin at home with Gary in the DDC , and Gary Hansen now back home in So Cal, Izaak and I have the place all to ourselves. That was, until Pancho showed up on our doorstep at about 4am this morning. Obviously, he's been reading all of the Whistler web posts we've been doing, and was jealous. No problem. He's part of the team, so we decided not to deport him.

After listening to Pancho heckel me about all of my recent posts, we went to go shredding.

The weather wasn't the best, but when the wind blows, the powder always settles in one spot...the trees.

The visibility almost required sonar to find your way...which is why I let Pancho lead the way. On the first run down, he careened into an ice wall, and flipped down the cat track. The following run, he over-compensated in the same spot, and slid off the run. Too bad for him, because I had a few good laughs, and never managed to get in the same predicaments as he was getting himself into.

As we were blindly making our way down from the peak, Pancho spotted a really good chute that will probably fill up tomorrow. Hopefully we get there first, before the mad morning rush. It was mighty peppered with rocks, and the entrance to it was somewhat icy, so we bypassed it for the runout of another chute that was full of untouched powder. Good choice.

Pancho conveiniently left his digi-cam home (since he was going out riding with a photographer), so I was left shooting photos of him doing fun stuff like this nice little rock drop into an open powder field. He rubbed in the fact that I was the photographer by spraying me with his first turn after he landed. Nice guy.

Tomorrow should be good. Pancho and I found some pretty good misty trees to shoot in with some real camera gear...not that little digi-cams are bad. Hopefully we'll come up with the goods. Until then, we shall hope.