Driving through a torrential downfall – typical North Shore rain – the phone rang; it was Craig Beaulieu calling to say they had delayed the Canadian Shield at Seymour until the following day. Something about poor visibility, bad conditions, and wait what was that? Too much snow? After spending a split second a tad bit bitter that I wasn't standing in some ridiculous long line-up at the bottom of Whistler Mountain, my car hit the snow line on the Mt. Seymour Highway. Since most of the city dweller's cars were sliding everywhere and heading nowhere but the ditch, I told myself to just point it and keep heading up into the mountains. Are you kidding? It just snowed 51cms at Seymour and I wanted some of it.

Scattered throughout this awesome three-chairlift mountain were posses of homies dropping cliffs, hitting jibs, lapping the park, finding pow stashes. The 15-and-under sections of the contest was still a go, and they sucked it up and battled it out in a snow storm, while people like Kevin Sansalone rode for something like eight hours that day. "I didn't even know if I was going to come up when I found out they were going to cancel the contest," said Gillian Andrewshenko, "but we didn't have anything to do so we came up anyways." After meeting up with Sansalone, he showed them the secret spots and they dropped some nice "medium-sized" cliffs. "The light opened up to blue-bird skies," said Andrewshenko, "and it was the most epic pow ever." Craig McMorris, James Friedrich, and John Swystun also destroyed the mountain, and the word is that McMorris might make the moves to Whistler this spring and go backcountry. Not a bad idea.

While most boarders took advantage of the deep the day prior, bright and early Sunday morning the ams and pros kicked off with the ‘best out of two runs' for ams and ‘best out of three' for pros. The course consisted of a jib feature at the top - either a down-flat-down staircase or a long round down bar, or a down flat - followed by two decent-sized jumps. "Today started off really foggy and I kind of had a bad feeling about it," said Craig Beaulieu. "Looking at the course you couldn't even see the first jump after the rail, so that didn't give me any better feelings. But then it actually broke through, and it stayed clear for about an hour, hour and a half. Then, of course, for our second runs it fogged up a little bit and started snowing a lot."

Many of the girls had flown in from out of town. Asking Samm Denena, who had won the last Shield stop at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, what she thought of her runs, she laughed, and said, "I did a Front Three, and I think it's the first front three that I did where I landed on my head, so I probably got a ten out ten on the bail score." "Well, I saw you land a back three in your last run," I said, remarking that I had missed seeing this phenomenal head-first bail. "Oh, I missed it too," said Denena, sarcastically, "I blacked out, and woke up with some hay beside me that I thought I was on a farm." Finding out that she got here on Thursday and been hanging with her aunt Cindy out in Abbotsford, it makes sense she was seeing things hillbilly-style, especially after she mentioned she saw her first donkey just walking along the side of the road near Cindy's - which sounds like a pretty epic time if you ask me.

For the girls, Brooke Voigt won third overall and won the best trick by gapping the down-flat-down. Gillian Andrewshenko placed second, with a backside 50/50 on down-flat-down, to a back three indy, followed by a front three tail off the last jump. Comparing the course to Mont Tremblant's (two jibs to a three-jump line), where she also podiumed in second place, she mentions that it was definitely a shorter course here. "I enjoy longer courses because you have more time to be creative, and it's nice to have a variety of tricks to switch it up." She paused, grinned, and added, "but it's also fun doing a small course because every hit counts, and you have to make everything perfect, so that's a bit of a different challenge in itself."

Jenna Blasman from Kitchener, Ontario, came out west with her brother – their dad had paid for his flight, so that he could act as her coach. It paid off; she took first place with two good runs off the jumps: a back three to a front five and a back three to front three. "Yesterday was my first pow day ever," she enthused. "I was falling everywhere and getting stuck, and I had to hike, but I had the biggest smile on my face the whole time because it's the best – I know what everyone is talking about now."

As for the guys? Darcy Sharpe was spotted looking for a ride to the bottom of the hill just before the winners were announced. Most boarders' vehicles looked pretty full, until Craig McMorris piped up and offered a ride, but then hesitated, laughed, and added, "Well, if you win, I'm not driving you down." "Looks like your walking home," someone said. "Looks like your taking a limo," someone else said, laughing. "Don't worry, Darcy," said McMorris, half joking (probably not joking), "you can sit in the back of my truck in the box, like a dog."

When the results came in, Kyle Jasper got fifth, Warren Williams took fourth and McMorris was called up on stage for third place. Sharpe took second place and the standout trick award for his 50-50 through the kink with a frontside 540 out. Beaulieu took first-place, throwing down a 50-50 on the kink rail, switch 5-0 on the down, switch back 180 out, to a front 10 tailgrab off the first jump, wrapped up with a backside rodeo 5 on second jump. "You can't really expect the best conditions when it comes to contests, and you have to battle through it because everyone is in the same boat. I'm happy with my day; I rode all right," he commented. When asked about what he thought of the jumps, he responded, "I had to think of something that I could pop really big on the second jump, so I thought a backside rodeo would have been the right trick for it. Usually when I spin frontside, I kind of slide out a bit, so I decided to stick with a back rodeo."

While trying to get the real dirt on how Beaulieu had torn his groin muscles that he had been rehabbing for the past three weeks, he busted out the splits in the crowds, Sharpe stuck around to watch his sister compete in the skier finals (and opted out of riding like a dog in the back of McMorris' truck), and McMorris hit the road to Vernon to, undoubtably, go ride some more pow. The next stop of the Shield is at Calgary's COP this coming weekend, so if you want a chance at a nice chunk of 10K, then sign up because chances of it puking there are as likely as seeing a donkey cruise down Calgary's Electric Avenue.

All photos: Jussi Grznar

(keep reading for the full results)