Floating tits deep!!!

Sorry for the quick double posting, but the two days we skied at what is called the “Floating island” totally deserves it's own post.

The “Floating island” lays about an hour and a half north of Asahikawa on the road 273. We got there on the first day at about noon. My dad went for a leek and came back to me saying: I’m sinking to my hip in the snowbank!!! So I figured: “What ever! You are always a bit too excited! Let’s get started to really figure things out!” As my injury doesn’t really want to heal really fast, I let my dad breaking up trail!!!

Staying at the back, I was watching him breaking up trail without much effort in 3 feet of snow.

We arrived at the top and there was so much snow on the way up, that we couldn’t believe it was going to be really stable; so we dig a pit. After assessing that this was probably the more consistent snowpit I ever dig, we took the skins off and get ready to ski.

We weren’t prepare for what was just waiting for us.

The deepest, lightest snow we both have ever skied!!!

We couldn’t believe how good it was! I was skiing mouth wide open to have it constantly filled up with snow. For my first time ever, the faceshots I was having were dark. By dark I mean that there is so much snow getting too my face that everything gets dark!!!!

Fortunately, the trees were so sparse that in just getting a look every 2-3 turns was enough to see our line.

We were both screaming while skiing and while watching the other ski. Watching my dad coming down, with a massive cloud of powder smoking on his back was one of the nicest thing I ever watch.

We were supposed to leave on that day to head towards Honshu. But after only 3 runs we figured we couldn’t leave it. So we came back the next day.

We got there around 9h00 to have more time to enjoy that heaven-for-skier-on-earth. On our way up, we realize that 10 more inches have been gently dropped in our skin track by mother nature!!! To top it off, the sky cleared up and we had some nice blue sky!

We actually had all together about 1500m vertical of continuous faceshots in dry, light snow in the kind of runs that you see in a movie in slow motion for about 10seconds and that sends shiver all the way down your spine and send you dreaming about maybe one day skiing that kind of snow.

Well…….. we skied that run for 2 days.

I would really like to describe the feeling we both had but as we figured after our last run, I guess you had to be there to fully understand what it was all about!

Those who have ski with me know how hard it is to me to say how good a powder day was and how deep the snow was since I am always looking for a better one; those 2 days will, I think, be hard to beat.

We’re now in Hakodate after driving almost the entire island. We’ll take the ferry tomorrow morning to start our journey on Japan’s main island: Honshu!!

Still floating……………………

evans