A Sweet Spring Day

Spring has no doubt come to Yuzawa and with the tempertures hovering around the low to mid teens in town you can now just get away with a T-shirt, today I have done just that. The remaining resorts which are still open in the Yuzawa and Minamiunoma area are Pine Ridge Resorts Kandatsu, Kagura, Naeba, Gala, Iwappara and Maiko of these Maiko and Kandatsu are closing this weekend but Kagura, Naeba and Gala will still be open till into May. Its defientley worth a trip up for some nice spring snow.

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.

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.

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.

Blue Skies and Bright Sunshine

This season hasn`t seen many of those with all the snow days so it was good to get out and have half a day lesson in the sunshine in just a jumper, the piste conditions could be described as perfect esically during the morning, it was great to have a sneak peak of what spring may have in store for us. But for the resort of the week accoriding to the JMA is snow until next week Friday starting tonight/early tomorrow morning.

Yuzawa Snow Festival day return - 1 March 2008

On 1st of March, Yuzawa Snow Festival in Yuzawa - a fantastic show & great event to experience. Hotel rooms are mostly booked up now, but even if you cannot get a hotel room it is still possible to make a day return trip from Tokyo, on this coming Staurday. The last train back to Tokyo leaves at 10.20pm - leaving you plenty of time to enjoy the festivities. WeLoveSnow offer a variety of day return packages, starting at only JPY14,500 for adults and JPY8,000 for children. Click here for more info: Japan Ski Day Return Packages.

Hakkaisan strikes again

Hakkaisan is an extreme resort. For the most part, the resort is un-groomed with very steep slopes, serviced by one main 'ropeway' (the Japanese term for a large gondola, holding perhaps 50 people).

On a powder day, the resort is amazing: the quality and quantity of the snow has to be some of the best in Japan. However, without a lot of snow this resort is full of icy moguls - which is about as bad as it gets.

As such, we are careful to choose our Hakkaisan days: but these days tend to be some of the best of the season. Yesterday was no exception: the powder was thigh deep, and there was a lot of fun to be had. In fact, I can honestly say that a couple of the runs yesterday were some of the best that I've ever experienced.