(Way too) early spring skiing...

It hasn't been the greatest week for skiing ever.... with temperatures reaching +10C at the base of most of the resorts around Nagano (including Hakuba), the conditions has been closer to what you would expect from late april...

On top of it, it was pissing rain on Friday.... (nothing to help our motivation level that is now setting at an historic low!)
But even with our motivation quite low, we've manage to kick ourselves to go out skiing! (after drinking canned coffee from the distributing machines....)
We spend our first few days around Hakuba Goryu and Hakuba 47. Those resorts are quite weirdly layout. There are tons of trails on the flat lower part and on the flat top part, but nothing really to link them. And from what I've heard, the patrols are quite tough, so don't really think about poaching the nice steep trees that are everywhere unless you don't mind spending some time in an interrogation room...

So we lapped some blueish runs until we get totally bored and went hiking on the ridge that started at the top of the resorts.
There is some really nice terrain from up there, but the recent warm front has started a cycle of wet avalanches a bit everywhere. So we stayed on some safer lines and enjoy some good times hiking and skiing from the ridge.

The following day, we woke up and the clouds were very low and the temperature wasn't that warm. We finally gather enough motivation to go up Happo-One. To our surprise, it was a nice inversion and a bright, warm, sunny day was waiting for us at the top of the hills!
We run the moguls through millions of Japanese and our biggest challenge was to avoid running into some uncontrolled skiers.
We couldn't hold ourselves down from hiking a bit so we went up the ridge at the top of Happo-One for some mellow turns.
The following day was (as forecasted) a rainy one. From the weather reports it was supposed to rain all the way to the top. Well, we passed on that one and drove south to Omachi to visit the Alpine Museum.
There wasn't any information in English so our visit was rather fast! So we decided to visit a sake brewery and sample some of their production. A good onsen ended up our day.

On the night was a party organized by Outdoor Japan. It is a bilingual magazine that covers outdoor activities happening in Japan and a bit in Asia. I've met the editor at the beginning of January and I was quite stoked to get my hands on the edition that was covering my story!
The rest of the party is a bit blurred and we spent the following day recovering from it!
We were still having one day in Hakuba before driving to Niigata from where we'll be (hopefully!) taking the ferry tonight towards Hokkaido.

So we went out on the ridge at the top of Happo and started hiking.
At the beginning the snow was quite soft, but since the weather was overcasted, the higher we got, the harder the snow was.
We finally made it to the top of Karamatsu-dake from where the wind was really hauling! It was one of the worst wind I have ever experience!!!
We hiked down a bit before finally convincing ourselves to drop in the backcountry.
The snow was rather nice and soft at the top part, but it turned to a more glueish type lower down.
Going down that gully brought us through the most avalanche run-outs I have ever been into.
The warm temperature from the past days and the rain had really get the things moving around here!!!
Fortunately for us, there is a summer road going up the valley between Happo and Hakuba47 that we followed all the way down.
We finally arrived at Hakuba47 in a heavy down pour (again....).
We are in Myoko right now where we might be able to get some motivation to get some turns in if the weather cleared up a bit. From here, we'll drive straight to Niigata.

If we understand properly the ferry schedule and the tsunami travelling advisory is not holding the ferry at the dock, we'll be back on Hokkaido tomorrow!

Cheers,
evans

The spectacular Japanese Alps

We left Myoko and its nice Japanese vibe to drive towards Hakuba and its buzzling town and resorts. Unfortunately, the resorts around haven't receive the snow that we skied at Seki Onsen. Halfway down our first (and only) run, we just needed some motivation in cans. The conditions were not fast, not hard, but just shear, pure ice!
Since Etienne was to leave on the following day, we turned to the other option Hakuba has to offer: party! After drinking 3.6 liters of sake we went out.... the rest is history that none of us can remember!
The following day, we weren't much in the mood for skating down the hill, so we went to Matsumoto to visit a castle. It was one of the worst sightseeing I ever done! No history, no information, no nothing. Don't waste your time visiting this feodal castle.
We dove back north but this time towards Yuzawa. It is a nice little town nestle in the Japanese Alps with tons of visitors from Tokyo. After a quick call to the brother of a friend of mine, he directed us to Mt Tairappyo for a little tour. It has fallen around 15cm overnight so we were expecting some nice conditions. The way up was fairly easy and from the top, we were able to get our first glimpse of the mountain range.
We were both amaze by how big the mountains were and how steep some lines looked.

We kept ourselves from doing anything too stupid considering the snow conditions and we skied down the main face of the mountain.
Since we skied a west face in late afternoon, the powder had already started to get a bit more wet. The sun is really strong here and it really bakes the snow laying on the south and west facing aspects around.
The following day, we headed with Guillaume and one of his friend to Mt Daigenta to ski some glades he had scouted and who were straight north facing. It seems that is has been really windy around since all the snow we skied were some kind of wind crust.
Considering all this, we drove towards Minakami to ski Tanigawadake Tenjindaira. This tiny little hill (3 double chairs) usually ranked in the top 3 resorts for the most snow in Japan. If you add this statistic to the sick backcountry terrain just next to the hill, you have one of the best option for some great turns.
Unfortunately for us, the weather has started to warm up quite over the freezing level and we had to forgot any plans about riding some fresh, dry pow.

After two laps inbounds, Babiche had a little summit fever, so we packed our gear and started hiking towards Mt Tanigawadake. This big mountain lays just next to the ski hill and offers tons of option for some nice turns.
We made our way slowly to the top enjoying the nice, summer like weather.
From the top, the view was spectacular.
I had previously packed 2 beers and I don't remember having one in a more spectacular place! I can tell you that we enjoyed every sip of it.
After spending as much time as we could up there, it was more than about time that we headed down. The snow was soft and a bit melted by the warm weather.
We skied in some really beautiful light and finally arrived at the car just 15 minutes before total darkness.
That was a really great day out there and I was quite glad Babiche kicked my lazy ass up!
We'll now drive back towards Hakuba to see the spring-like conditions around there before the rain comes (yes there is some rain on the forecast now....)

It looks like it's going to be the last stretch of the Honshu journey since there isn't any rain forecasted on Hokkaido. Hopefully we'll be able to get some more dry stuff before we go back in 3 weeks!

evans

Finally YUKI!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We stayed around Nozawa Onsen for one more day. By using some really interesting information about the slackcountry we were able to have a fairly decent day skiing the mountain.

Since the crust was still quite present, we moved towards Myoko Kogen which is about 1hour from Nozawa. That seemed to be the perfect place for Babiche to get his skills back...

Myoko receives an average of more than 14m of snow per year, so we figured it would be one of the first place to receive some snow to cover the still present rain crust. This area consists of 3 main resorts (Myoko Suginohara, Myoko Ikenotaira and Myoko Akakura (which is also subdivided in Akakura Kanko and Akakura Onsen)) all of them are on the slopes of Myoko-san. There are also some smaller resorts nearby like Seki Onsen that receives more than 16m of snow!!!

We skied the slopes of Akakura Kanko which of the big three, seemed to suit us the best.

By getting in the wood (skiers left of the highest chairlift), we found some nice powder stashes but the crust was still present. At the end of the day, we met Bill Ross, who works for Myoko Backcountry Ski School as a ski guide. He gave us some really helpful information about some backcountry possibilities. After about 2 hours chatting, we had backcountry, slackcountry and riding options for the next month!

We then headed towards Tsunabe Onsen, which is a really great place to have a onsen. After soaking ourselves, we realized that it was snowing quite hard, so we parked the car in Seki Onsen ski area for a good camping-style curry and slept there.

On the following morning, we woke up to 30cm of fresh snow in the parking!!! After driving back and forth to Akakura Kanko (to realize they had receive only about 15-20cm), we made up our mind to hit the slopes of Seki Onsen.

We made the right choice!!!

There wasn't much skiers on this 2 lifts ski area (one double and one single!) so we were able to get some nice turns in.

After lapping the bottom chair for the whole morning, they finally opened the top lift. Babiche and I lucky out as we were able to get the first and second run from the top!!!

We were finally able to get some nice turns without feeling the crust. It was so good to get that soft feeling back again after about 10 days.

Today, it was a nice, warm and sunny day, so we went back to Akakura Kanko to ski some nice north facing slopes that we skied two days ago. We soon realized that we really made the right choice yesterday by skiing Seki, since only 15cm was sitting on top of the still present rain crust and every turns was coupled with a screaching noise...

So we made the decision to get back to the car, had some sake and enjoy some sunshine.

Etienne will be going back soon, so we'll head towards Hakuba from where he'll be able to get a direct shutlle bus back to the airport.

So we'll keep our fingers crossed to be able to get some more overhead turns!!!

Kampai!

evans