Sunday, January 17, 2010

Balls deep !!!

We stayed around Tomamu waiting for some new snow. Since Amelie twisted a little bit her knee last week it slowed us a bit at the beginning of this week. I skied the resort that mostly had groomed runs and packed offpiste.
We drove around and looking at some potential backcountry spot. Nissho pass prove to be the only potential spot we found. As the snow never really came in Tomamu we left towards some more powdery land.
As we were not skiing that much, we figured we should visit some sake brewery… We stopped in Asahikawa, the second largest city of Hokkaido for some free sampling. It is actually quite surprising how many sake breweries there are in Japan. Most towns have their own little brewery. We did sample quite all right until all the sake we were trying all tasted the same!!!!
When we started to have a bit less fun, we drove towards Kamui ski links a resort that is 20 minutes west of Asahikawa. We met Maeda-San which is probably one of the friendliest managers I’ve ever met.
Kamui is a medium size resort that is blessed with tons of snow and by tons, I really mean it! It also has the friendliest approach to backcountry user of all the resorts I’ve skied up to now in Japan.
We got there as it was snowing and hopefully for Amelie, her knee was getting much better. We skied around the first day but spend most of our time in the backside of the resort where some slackcountry was providing continuous faceshots.
We had such a good time that we decided to stay one more day.
And that was a great choice!!! Overnight it fell about a foot of snow. With the wind transportation towards the backside, there was probably around an average of 3 feet of fresh.
From Amelie’s point of view, it was her deepest ski day ever. It was so deep that even with my skis with 130mm underfoot, I was totally sinking!
We skied all day until the snow kicked our ass!!
Definitively, a great day of skiing that deserves a great ending! So why not some more sake?!

We left Kamui with great memories of friendly people and very DEEP snow!!!
We'll stay around central Hokkaido for about one more week!!!
Now, the weekly question: How many hours do you think you are going to waste at your job reading this blog??
evans

9 comments:

Dongshow said...

I only wasted a minute reading it, but plan on wasting my entire work day tomorrow looking for tickets to Japan now that I saw that.

jimb said...

wasted 5 minutes, and will dream about it at week long

Babiche said...

RI-DI-CU-LE!

Furansoa said...

A la place de perdre mon temps à lire le tout, je serai au Japon dans quelques jours...

J'ai vécu à Aomori pour 2 ans et j'ai fais mon ski bum un hiver là bas... j'y retourne la semaine prochaine avec des amis pour skier Hakkoda, que je te recommande fortement. 14000 yen pour skier pour le MOIS!

Je serai là du 25 au 29, avec une groupe de gaijin, si jamais tu es dans le coin, je connais la montagne comme le fond de ma poche.

si tu y vas après, fais toi ami avec des locaux pour qu'ils te montrent les bons spots!

Francois

p.s Tu connais un Martin Lafontaine?

Evans Parent said...

Certainement que je connais Martin!!

Pour ce qui est de la suite, je ne sais pas encore si je vais aller à Hakkoda bientôt ou plus vers la fin de l'hiver... Est-ce que tu vas à Hakkoda avec Ben Mills??

Anonymous said...

Fantastic, looks like you have got the best of it already. Just enjoy the sun too:
http://www.yr.no/place/Japan/Hokkaido/Hokkaido/detailed_long.html

Anonymous said...

Je dirais plus amydale deep!!!!
2 minutes pour lire mais plusieurs heures à rêver!

Martin said...

Cé super de te suivre Evans. On se revoit à ton retour...bon ski!!!

Martin Rhéaume
Éclairage Dimension Plus.

Furansoa said...

Ouais, j'y suis allé avec Ben. En fait, c'est moi qui l'a invité. Cocasse que j'ai entendu parler de ton blog par trois personnes différentes. La 3e est Viv Moss qui était avec Ben et moi. C'est un Québécois qui vit à Dubai et vous avez un ami commun.

De retour au Canada après une semaine de pow! fresh tracks on every run, as usual!

Si tu veux faire du backccountry, Hakkoda sera mieux en mars et avril.