Snowing heavily

Today is the day to be out on the hill, snow has been falling heavily since about 6:00am this morning and it looks like its set to continue for the rest of the day the 1 week weather outlook is either snow or cloud and very low tempertaures. It probably won`t get much warmer than -3 today. Today would be a perfect day out in either in Kagura or Hakkaisan and this weekend is set to be very good so if you can`t make it during the week make sure to be up for the weekend.

Nozawa Onsen Fire Festival

Yesterday night was the Nozawa Onsen fire festival. Nozawa Onsen is about a 1 hour drive from Yuzawa and is a small Onsen town located in the mountains. The fire festival involved people trying to light a structure with flaming torches while other people tried to put the flames out so the structure would not alight, eventually it was set alight and a spectacular display was put on. All in all it was great night.

Day out in Hakkaisan

This week has not seen it stop snowing and on Sunday we gave Kagura a miss and tried out Hakkaisan in Mukikamachi. What a good move! There was hardly anyone around and with their policy similar to that of Kagura in terms of off-piste lots of fun can be had, we almost ended up in a river a couple of times! It is defintley worth the 30 minute drive from Yuzawa for such a great resort!

Beatiful Snow

Overnight snowfall was around 15cm in town, much more up in Kagura where it started snowing in the late afternoon. It has no cleared up to a fine partly cloudy day. The weekend outlook is for it to snow all through the weekend. This is good news because Monday is a public holiday and Kagura should be really good.

Maddest thing I've ever seen in a ski resort

Mountain bikes are for mountain tracks, skis and snowboards for snow resorts. It's really that simple. Whoever thought of mixing the two is probably still recovering from serious injury.

These photos were taken on Dec 23rd: we went on a road trip to Shiga Kogen ski resort in Nagano prefecture. The bike race took part on a resort piste: we were allowed to board down alongside the stragglers.

The bikes were not as quick as we thought they'd be: it looked like a lot of leg muscle power to was needed to get through some parts of the course. For the steeps, it seemed like a case of closing your eyes and hoping for the best...

Happy christmas !

Well we may not have had a lot of new snow but the conditions out on the hill are perfect. The difference this year from last year is that the tempratures keep really low, even with blue skies like yesterday the courses are keeping really fresh. It looks like the next new snow will be with us by the weekend which will help the lower resorts in the town. (We went on a tour of some other resorts Shiga Kogen and Nozawa, at this stage Kagura has the best conditions out of them all).

First day out at Kandatsu

Yesterdays conditions at Kandatsu where excellent, the snow that settled the night before had been groomed and there was hardly anyone out, but 2pm I was still finding groomed patches that no one had been over. It was some of the best groomed conditions that I had ever been on without having to wake up early! This weekend sees another batch of town level resorts opening such as Naspa Ski Garden, Yuzawa Nazakato and Ipponsugi. We hope you enjoy the weekend.