I have grown up skiing Mt Seymour with some of my best friends. Hundreds of days we've spent exploring the mountain above Deep Cove in Vancouver. However, there have been none quite like today, Christmas Eve. With record breaking snowfall in Vancouver, we decided today was the day - ski Seymour top to bottom, all the way down and to our doorsteps a block off the water. And so we did, with barely a ding to show for it. Taking the road for half the way and then the Old Buck trail the bottom half, then free heeling through the streets and paths of Deep Cove we made it. Merry Christmas indeed.

In snow deprived times like these, where I'm riding my bike in December (no, we don't live such bad lives) instead of skiing pow, I'm reminded of Andre Charland's unforgettable blog-ramble of yesteryear, "Remember When." If its escaped your memory, here it is again in all its excellence:

Please, please, please...start puking snow again. I want to ski deep pow. I want face shots. I want to ski ridiculous pillow lines like pillow biter. I want powder over my head. I want to choke on snow. I want to huck the waterfall with 50 other people the same day. I know I want too much...so I'm a whiny spoiled biatch! So what! I like powder...that's not a crime. I like getting puked on!  -Andre Charland

I have been in Ushuaia, Argentina for the last 8 days, waiting out what has been for 100 people the most up-and-down rollercoaster waiting game of their lives. Our intention, to go and ski in Antarctica via the 100m Russian ship M/V Orlova, was shut down when the ship was found to be unfit to sail. We were on the boat, ready to go, mentally prepared, and then KABOOM, they dropped the bomb telling us the trip was cancelled.

I have spent the last week of my journey in Portillo, Chile, amongst unique company. 5 photographers, myself included, have been shooting in friendly competition for the South American Photo Challenge. It has been an honour and a pleasure to shoot alongside the talented Steve Lloyd, Adam Clark, Gene Dwarkin, and Grant Gunderson, as well as their athlete partners. From ping-pong and reggaeton sessions with Herman Maier and the Austrian team to our clown servers at breakfast lunch and dinner, its an experience none of us will soon forget. Yesterday we received our first pure blue pow day, and I'm sure we all gathered some timeless images of what skiing here in Portillo can be like.

I have made it down to Bariloche, Argentina, my latest stop on a whirl-wind trip of South America ski destinations, accompanied by my Norwegian travel contingent. We have seen blue bird pow conditions in El Colorado, above the smog of Santiago, more of the same at South America's only cat skiing operation, Ski Arpa Snowcats. I happened upon my brother Les there, high in the Andes, an odd circumstance.