Just got back into Sapporo from three days of boarding in Niseko following three days of bus-tripping out to Sapporo Kokusai. Pretty much every day was going off at Kokusai, with between 4 and 8cm of new stuff to ride every day. On the first day there was a pretty hard melt crust under the fresh, but this made it easier to hike back in-bounds (don’t ask). Each aditional day’s snow added to the soft layer. On Friday when I headed out to Niseko, the snow was crazy dumping in Sapporo, probably around 6 to 8cm of new snow in town. The sound of the front-end loader scraping the street in the dark of the morning gave it away. The further out from town the bus went, the less and less significant the signs of recent snowfall became. After seeing a reasonably good layer of wind-redistributed snow at Nakayama-touge, I figured it had snowed out that way, but the wind had just moved it around. Arriving at Niseko, I discovered that it had in fact snowed there too, but the bluebird weather made the new snow adhesively sticky down at the lower elevations. Root will remember the glue-like grip of the snow down at the Hanazono base.
The skies darkened and the wind picked up and new snow began to fall. I had expected a normal Niseko ice-krunk weekend, but the developing storm on Friday afternoon laid down a good layer for Saturday. The bottom was still krunky on Saturday, but the upper areas were soft, and the base layers were not icy, since the temperature had stayed below freezing. It was bitingly windy though. Sunday morning brought the beautiful sounds of front-end loaders clearing the streets and parking lots, so up the mountain for the last day I went, finding the typical “fake powder” riding at the lower levels with 10cm of fresh concealing a mogully death ice base. The topside however was very nice, with three days of accumulated new snow. It was still typically windy though, and although the user level was surprisingly low, everything got ridden out pretty quickly.
Getting on the bus at 14:00, the sky was clear blue, and the weather warm. The conditions progressively deteriorated returning to Sapporo, with a light flurry at Nakayama-touge, and a full-blown blizzard in town. Just from the time I left my lodging to go to Tokyu Hands, get some soup curry for dinner and return, 8cm fell outside the doorstep. If I was more hardcore, or didn’t have other priorities, I’d catch the 07:30 bus to Kokusai and ride until 15:00 and get on the direct bus to the airport and catch my domestic connector at 18:00. I know Kokusai will be freaking off the hook tomorrow. Maybe next time – I have some manga shopping to do tomorrow.
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