Last week I had a bit of an emotional hangover. After a great holiday in Cambodia, I was having a hard time getting back into the routine of Japanese life. After 2 weeks in the sun, I was back to my chilly apartment and schools. Two weeks of being able to read and speak my native langue, I was back to being illiterate and using childish gestures. I was definitely starting to get a little down on Japan when POW! the long weekend came. With the long weekend came about 50-70cm of fresh snow to our local (about 100km away) hill. It was awesome! I was reluctant to get excited, because we are at 34 degrees latitude, and last time we went snowboarding, there was more green grass on the mountain then snow. When we got there on Sunday it was piling up soft and deep. Again reluctant to get excited because we didn't arrive till about noon, I assumed that all of the good stuff would have been tracked out, wrong again. It seems that most Japanese people that go to Mizuho Highland are snowboarders, and most of them spend more time flopping around the hill then going down it, which is a little annoying when you are trying to navigate a groomed run. BUT… even the small percentage of quality skiers and snowboarders that were there � stick to the groomed runs… at the most extreme they go on the black marked runs. So that means that Tessa and I had 2 entire lift accessed mountains full of trees that had not been touched by skiers! It was absolutely unreal! Some of the trees are a little tight, some of the slopes are a little tough to get to, but most are not. 30m from the top of the main lift was a completely untouched (this year!) 50 degree slope, full of near perfectly spaced deciduous trees covered in waist deep snow! We kept hurrying back up to the top, because we were worried, that once people saw tracks into them, the, 100s of people going past it would start tearing it up. Every time we returned to only our tracks. It took me a while to wrap my head around it � I still haven't completely. In Nelson the backcountry � where you had to spend an hour skinning up saw way more action then the areas we were riding this weekend. It was amazing, line after line, of effortless powder. So it was a really good weekend, I am back at work for a couple days � then I go to a conference Thursday and Friday, but I am already checking the snow forecast for next weekend � not that it will matter � worst case scenario we ride around the tracks we made this weekend!
December 29th
Yesterday
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