We decided to stay a bit longer in Tokachi-dake to keep on exploring some spots I haven't ski and enjoying the onsens.
The weather did get slightly better, but the sun was quite far from us!!!
There is a tiny bit less snow than around the same time last year, but still enough to enjoy most of the common runs
As we were cooking our fancy lunch/dinner featuring cheap scallops (8 huges for 2$!!!) at our car, Neil Hartmann and the guys from Car Danchi showed up in the same parking lot as we were! Those guys are filming snowboard movies and living in their cars!
They were up around Tokachi-dake area to film for their next movies.
After a day spend skiing around Fukiage Spa and trying a different run around Furano-dake, we catched up with the guys that were heading to a cabin to hang out for the night!
The invitation to not sleep in a car for a night sounds quite nice (for Amelie, it actually sounds like the best thing ever as the past nights have been quite cold!) We checked out some footage they took, drank sake and plum wine and ate a lot!
This really entertaining evening leads to a day spend with them looking how they actually shoot their movies. What a nice experience!! It was great to see how the pros are shooting, setting up the lines and lining up the shots! We again cut the day a bit short due to the cold temperature that froze both the cinematographer and the riders!
From Tokachi-dake we hitted the road west towards Sapporo.
Apparently, some storms have hitten the west part of the island while we were up at Tokachi-dake. From the snowbanks and everyone shovelling both their driveway and their roofs, it was a major one.
We finally scouted a nice open spot not so far from the road around Furubira (a tiny fisherman village west of Otaru) and decided to give it a go! Even if the snowbanks around town were giants, the snowpack was rather shallow and weak.
Don't have to tell you we had some weird looking by the locals as we were skiing down the streets!!!
We woked up and went to buy breakfast at the groceries. We had one of the biggest surprise of our trip when we spot 2 guys walking off from the beach with.... SURF BOARDS!!! Guess some like it cold! I do have to agree that the waves looked rather big.
The high point of the road 998A has been recommended by Neil. As we drove up, we found some awesome backcountry. There is some steep lines, trees and probably some car shuttle runs to be done up there. This is probably my nicest discovery of the trip! Since we were (again) in some kind of blizzard, we didn't venture too far off. We lined up some turns not too far from the car and had a few laps. This is an area I will for sure explore more sometimes!!!
We just got to Niseko to get some good backcountry runs and some slackcountry before going back home (sniff, sniff!!!!). It has average about 20 cm per day for the last 10 days, so it looks quite promising! At the time of writing, it is PUKING outside!
evans
As we were cooking our fancy lunch/dinner featuring cheap scallops (8 huges for 2$!!!) at our car, Neil Hartmann and the guys from Car Danchi showed up in the same parking lot as we were! Those guys are filming snowboard movies and living in their cars!
After a day spend skiing around Fukiage Spa and trying a different run around Furano-dake, we catched up with the guys that were heading to a cabin to hang out for the night!
This really entertaining evening leads to a day spend with them looking how they actually shoot their movies. What a nice experience!! It was great to see how the pros are shooting, setting up the lines and lining up the shots! We again cut the day a bit short due to the cold temperature that froze both the cinematographer and the riders!
From Tokachi-dake we hitted the road west towards Sapporo.
We play it safe and made it to the car skiing!
We woked up and went to buy breakfast at the groceries. We had one of the biggest surprise of our trip when we spot 2 guys walking off from the beach with.... SURF BOARDS!!! Guess some like it cold! I do have to agree that the waves looked rather big.
The high point of the road 998A has been recommended by Neil. As we drove up, we found some awesome backcountry. There is some steep lines, trees and probably some car shuttle runs to be done up there. This is probably my nicest discovery of the trip! Since we were (again) in some kind of blizzard, we didn't venture too far off. We lined up some turns not too far from the car and had a few laps. This is an area I will for sure explore more sometimes!!!
We just got to Niseko to get some good backcountry runs and some slackcountry before going back home (sniff, sniff!!!!). It has average about 20 cm per day for the last 10 days, so it looks quite promising! At the time of writing, it is PUKING outside!
evans
1 comment:
Hello Evans, and the others snow chasers with you.
I came across your BLOG recently and it is great. You guys are an inspiration.
I am on a similar quest, to find powder, on a lesser scale. My BLOG http://francoisbergeronphoto.blogspot.com/
Keep up the good work and I wish you lots of POW.
Francois.
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