Tuesday 25 March 2008

Monkey Magic




Well spring has arrived, we had complete blue skies, no need for coats and plenty of sun screen being plastered on. The snow conditions are still pretty good even though it is so hot, we still managed to find some good off piste as well as some fast nice courses. Kagura are officially opening until the 25th of May this season so still another whopping 9 weeks left. (Tashiro area will close on the 6th of May). The big highlight was in the car park where a band of about 30 Monkeys decided to look for food, this involved a lot of new borns being dragged around the mountain by their parents.

Wednesday 5 March 2008

Top Lift -Off




A nice 30cm of new snow on Monday night set Tuesday up to be another quality day on the hill. Kagura have now opened the top lift which takes you right up to the top ridge. You can tell why they do not open this during Jan/Feb as it gives instant access to more backcountry than they could patrol; didn't matter which way we chose we were hitting 3km powder runs all day. I have done backcountry all over Japan and yesterday just proved that it does not get better than Kagura. Week forecast looks like snow all day Thursday, cloudy Friday morning with more snow coming in later during the day. Saturday fine and Sunday sunny so get there early Saturday morning as there will be some fresh tracks to be had.

Monday 3 March 2008

Big Weekend in Yuzawa



The snow festival went off without a hitch on Saturday and although it was snowing there where many people walking around town. The Giant snowman in the open lot next to the bottle bar also made an appearance after giving last year a miss snow is forecast for tonight and starting again in the late afternoon but probably only a few cm and Spring is starting show its face with a nice blue sky warm day on the slopes on Sunday hopefully with many more of those to come.