My feet have thawed.
In past years, the side of the halfpipe has been chock full of photographers and it is pretty much a free-for-all for positions. So we got there five hours before the preliminaries (and 12 hours before the final) to make sure we had positions to shoot.
As it turned out there was no one on the pipe when we got there so I put on some modest crampons and climbed up to check out some spots to shoot for our graphics. When I came down, the venue photo manager said I couldn’t go back up unless I had the bear-claw type crampons, I had ones that were more like tire chains.
At about noon when it was time to go stake out our positions, I made my way past a distracted volunteer whose job it was to check the crampons of the photographers. The good news was that I got my place on the pipe, the bad news was that I couldn’t go back down between rounds for fear that I wouldn’t get back up there. So I spent 10 hours on the pipe, through the prelims, the semis and then the finals, which ended at about 10:30. Thankfully, it wasn’t painfully cold, although I did have foot warmers and many layers of clothes. Im not sure the foot warmers ever did their thing.
My colleagues who were in the venue press center thought it might be funny to keep calling me to tell me how warm it was down there and how good the hot dogs tasted. I did have three stale cookies and a bottle of water. At one point between the semis and the final, i just laid down in the snow with my head on my backpack and took a nap.
Although he didn’t win, it was pretty amazing to watch Shaun White. He just gets so much higher than everyone else. By a long shot.
ROOM-TREAT UPDATE
For my sacrifice on the halfpipe, last night i got home to find out that I won a set of steak knives for my kitchen!
Eat at Joe’s 
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