After the awesome powder day we had on Thursday, Friday should be just as good right? Wrong....
Unfortunately, the wind that had picked up on Thursday night had blown a lot of the top coat of powder away, and what was left was hard packed. Dean and me were slow to start on Friday, after having such a full day on Thursday. We had to get the bus to Takamagahara as all the lifts in Ichinose Family were stopped, due to the wind. We did a couple of runs but the powder was so hard packed that we couldn't float on top of it, and we couldn't turn properly. It wasn't enjoyable, so Dean and me headed back for the hotel at 11, when it started raining :(.
Good thing we didn't take back our boards though, because after veging in the room for a while, we noticed this white stuff falling... We waited til about 2cm were on the roof, before deciding to strap up and head out again. And boy are we glad we did...
The lifts were running at Ichinose Family now, and the rain had actually softened up the hard packed powder, and made conditions better! Also, what started as harder snow falling, graduated towards powder, then a powder blizzard later on! We did a couple of runs, before catching the bus to Hasuike. I needed to get some money out from the post office (Post offices and 7-11's have international ATM's) for the bus and train the next day. When I'd finished that we made our first snow man.. Then we made another bigger (but not really big) snow man and put him on the post box... Not sure if thats an offence, but we'd have feigned ignorance anyway... Dean got photos.
We started looking around as to how to get back toward Hoppo, Higashi or somewhere.... We started walking up the road back towards Hoppo, before a Japanese guy in a Legnum told us there wasn't any entrance that way.. He told us to go around the back of a hotel (he pointed to which one) and said there's an entrance in the back. We followed his advice and after a quick toboggan on the boards, we were at the right side.... of Giant..... We strapped in and started down, but we stuck to the powder, because this run is psychotic..
After getting to the bottom of Giant, we went on a lift to the top of Hoppo, and did a couple of blistering runs down. On the second one, Dean and I were flying, but I hit a powder patch and it hit me for six... goggles and beanie were off, and I looked like a snow man... And that hurt.... I was fine though, but it was getting late again, so we head towards the Nishidate lift at the bottom of Hoppo. Thats one of the things I loved about this area. With the exception of 1 or 2 mountains, all the other mountains are accessible by runs and lifts/gondolas.
When we got to the top of Nishitate-yama, you could barely see, the snow was falling that heavily, with wind and fog to boot.. We hurtled down there and took a couple of runs back towards Ichinose Family.
It was now just after 3.30 and neither me or Dean had stopped for lunch... We were running out of energy and falling down more often. But were were determined to stay out as long as possible, as this was our last day... We did, staying til they closed the lifts down. Then we headed to the rental place to take our boards back... After a quick trip down the hill we were back at the hotel, tired but thoroughly enamoured with the local boarding.
After a shower, we headed out to dinner. We decided to give the Austrian style place up the road a try. Got some fried chicken, chips, cheese (havarti, brie and creme freche), with Whitney getting the spaghetti bolognaise. (funny, Japanese do a really good spaghetti). They also had a "chalet set" with was a pot each of the 4 local beers. After not eating since breakfast, they made quick work of making me and Dean sleepy, but the food helped to balance it out. Also the 2 japanese girls that ran it were cute.
We headed back and after watching some telly, conked out just after 8.30..
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