Saturday: perfect day for a party. After a week of boosting snowboarding beyond its frontiers, the Burton European Open reached its final day for 2012. The weather was again sun and sweat, perhaps better for the crowd than the halfpipe itself, but the following days' forecast spelled a gloomy change to clouds and frozen slush. Without delay, the pipe finals were stratospheric, in accord with this year's astronaut theme, and even the evening of festivities was a smash...

Surf, skate, snow—they're all in the halfpipe.  The pipe is pure tradition, our roots in the waves and concrete that spawned snow shredding.  It is also the symbol of freestyle riding, and has been the arena for crowning freestyle champs since airs were born...

Another bluebird day: ouch.  I crossed the snow plaza as late as possible, barely making it in time for breakfast, wearing sunglasses.  My head was light like windless snowfall as I loaded my plate with greasy, crunchy, just-right bacon—I didn't think Euros knew how.  Lay it in a croissant, add some sliced meat, sip OJ and a double espresso, and slowly soak up last night's whiskey, beer, and Jäger...

I awoke in the night to the low roar of a grooming snowcat—our hotel is at slope's end.  Come morning, I opened my eyes and the bedroom curtain to a view of blue and gold and shiny white and black peaks...

Traveling through the Swiss darkness, on a city bus from a town called Chur, in some German-speaking canton. The driver is agro, whirling around turns, cutting it tight through little villages, as if on a tree run.  We climb up and around switchbacks as the snow banks on the side of the road begin to surpass the height of our bus....

If during the superpipe semis I froze while watching under a clear, obsidian night sky, for the finals I, and everyone else, had to endure far worse: rain.  At least the look was cool, the misty air lending a mystic effect to the background and hazing the bright floodlights.  Only those who watched it on TV escaped the punishment, but when the world's best men and women double cork an arm's reach away, who cares about a little drizzle?

Really, the WSC quarterpipe event was just a badass expression session—just what the crazed, intense snowboard contest scene needs for balance.  Who would disagree?  Certainly not the pros who got to ride alongside Håkonsen....