Snow actually makes people unhappy at Winter X. On the ground -- cool. Dumping on events -- not.

Chris Gunnarson, the course designer for the snowboarding and Moto X events, shakes his head when asked about the weather. Gunny spent all Thursday night on his Supercat, molding and honing the jumps and switches on the Slopestyle course.

"Conditions aren't great," he said, tilting his head back to peer out from underneath a low-riding beanie. He held a huge rake in one hand and a Motorola walkie in the other. "We're out here scraping and flattening the snow off between runs." His crew sends him CB static every couple of minutes or so about the status. "Some great tricks getting thrown down here," says one over the fuzz. "They're liking the course."

He nods and watches as the next athlete hits a frontside 50-50 off a rail.Tonight, he's skipping the parties -- again -- to dial in the Superpipe. "While everyone's getting their groove on, I'm getting my Cat on."

Maybe he'll live vicariously through one of his boys, Todd Richardson, who leads the Slopestyle pack after one run. Though the announcers keep calling him the "old man" (he's 31), he stomps all his tricks during his second pass at Gunny's course, including a sick backside 9.

At the bottom of the run, a group of boys with hair dyed an identical sloppy burgundy call his name. Todd heads towards the pack of autograph hounds, protected from hyperextended knee issues by a wooden fence.

Either inspired by the cameras or Richards' 88-point run, one kid lifts up all his jacket and sweatshirt to reveal a fat belly and burgeoning man breasts.

"Sign my nipple! Sign my nipple!" he begged.

Todd didn't hesitate. Gripping a blue magic marker, he drew a large circle around the kid's left aureole and a straight line down to the formless, mushy rolls of his abdomen.

"BAD," Richards wrote in block letters.

Gunny, do you copy?