We left from Yasu bloody early in the morning to make our trip up to Hakuba. It was a pretty awesome ride. When you get that far into the middle of nowhere they stop having actual train stations and just platforms. Looks like it would be really easy to ride for free if you wanted to.
We got to Hakuba around 2:30 in the afternoon as planned. Nathan Thompson was waiting for us which was good because I never pulled his cell number from the internet to something a bit more local (haven’t had internet in like 5 days).
Our first night in Hakuba we wandered around a bit looking for this British Pub (run by Austrailians). Food was pretty decent. From there Nate and I set out to do some night skiing, but as it turns out the rental shops don’t rent equipment for night skiing. Kinda lame. What was really stupid was that of this entire massive mountain, one run was open. I didn’t care. I needed to ski. I spent the next couple hours by my lonesome trying to get acquainted with the new bindings and their closer proximity to center mount. Took a bit but I managed to get the hang of it.
Tuesday’s plan was to ski all day, but things pretty much went horribly horribly wrong. First, we got to the hill too late for first chair. Then Nathan Walker suffered a boot failure and couldn’t ski, Nathan Thompson rented a snowboard which promptly broke after arriving at the top via gondola. Jess suffered a minor boot failure and claimed to forget what she was doing; although when I skied with her she was doing everything, including pole plants, correctly. I’m not sure what happened there. Jen and I were the only people who didn’t have any equipment failures. The only problem I had was that when REI mounted my new bindings, they set the DIN too low on them. This resulted in my ski popping off at a rather inopportune time. I was less than pleased. Thankfully I was able to find a ski bench to tighten them up. Nathan Thompson and Jess left the hill a bit early, but Jen and I decided we wanted to go all the way to the top of the mountain. We hit the gondola and rode up, unable to see anything. When we got to the top we were greeted by high winds and blowing snow. Couldn’t see anything (lift included). Decided that it was best to just call it a day. Problem was there was about 1500m of vertical between us and our hotel. We took the approach of following the lift line we could see, 2 poles at a time, until we hit the bottom. This took awhile as one might expect. We topped the day off with a dip in the Onsen and a fantastic meal at an Indian resturant. From there it was back to the hotel and ultimately, bed.
I had a really hard time sleeping Tuesday night. It was ungodly hot and I was really sore after my first full day of skiing of the year. I decided to go for a walk around 3am to find something to drink. I managed to find a free massage chair in the lobby, so I sat there while I drank my sports drink. Before going back to bed, I checked the snow accumulation in the parking lot, about 3 inches of fresh snow. This could only mean one thing, a hell of a lot more at the top. I went back to bed, still a little sore, but a lot less thirsty.
Woke up early Monday morning with the hopes of being able to get everything packed up and ready to hit the slopes for first chair. Again, fail. On the bright side, Nathan Walker decided he’d give it a go with me. He managed to rent some boots. We hopped on the gondola with the goal of making our frist run from the peak, where Jen and I failed the previous day. When we got to the top there was awesomness abound. They hadn’t started running the chair to the top yet and there was untracked powder; hundreds of acres of glory waiting to be pillaged. This was going to be awesome. As we were waiting in the lift line we watched the lucky first few make their mark on the hill. The powder was knee deep at the top! On the way up Nathan’s boots started giving him trouble again, although in a different spot. He forged on, but the pain proved to be too much when he got off the lift. Thankfully there was a groomed track down that he could ski down without too much exertion. Problem was that only took him to the top of the gondola. I noted the easy way down and told him I’d see him in an hour. I had to hit up one of the bowls.
I got back in the lift line and started making my way up. When I got inside the lift loading area an announcement came over the loudspeakers. I have no idea what it said as I was listening to my ipod, but they stopped the chair. After a minute or so they started it back up. I hopped on the lift what a French douchebag who was rude and decided it’d be a good idea to swing the chair with his massive powder boards. As we neared the top, I pieced together the reasoning behind stopping the chair. Wind. There we sait, Frenchie and I, in 50mph winds and Frenchie trying to one up himself in asshattery. Probably one of the scariest lift ride’s I’ve ever taken. We arrived at the top to a shuttered unloading zone. There was enough room to get out of the way of the chair and clip off your skis. From there everyone was funneled into the topside cafe (sponsored by Virgin) where we were supposed to wait the wind out. Being that the lift ride took a lot longer than it should have I had to forgoe the precautions. I stepped out into the unloading zone and started to gear up for the wind. When I had my clothing situated, I picked up my skis and started hiking to what would be my drop in point. I estimated the wind speed to be at least 30mph, but it could have easily been 50mph for all I know. I know that I couldn’t keep myself upright to clip my gear on. I trekked back to the cafe and used the building as a shield against the wind so I could clip in. Once clipped in I trekked, slowly, back to where I wanted to drop in stopping every few feet when the wind kicked up to huddle myself low to keep from being blown off the side of the mountain. I reached the top of the bowl to find another guy with the same idea. I huddled down to catch my breath and watched him drop in. A minute later, I followed. The next 30 minutes were some of the best skiing I’ve ever had. I had bowls, trees, steep faces, and powder, glorious powder, everywhere. About halfway down I managed to meet up with a group of powder seekers. They led me to some good stuff. Everyone was waiting for me when I arrived back at the gondola. I was ready to collapse. I pretty much skied it without stopping because of all the delay introduced by the lift stoppages. I stripped off my gear, put my shoes on, and walked back to the hotel to check out. Mission accomplished.
We left Hakuba around 2:30 on a limited express bound for Shinjuku (Tokyo) which arrived about 4 hours later.