0700 @ HNL. Of course, no staff or security yet.
(0)Archive for the 'Snow' Category
Page 10 of 14
Kuso! POS! F! I dropped my Niseko lift pass somewhere between the hotel room and the ticket window, so I couldn’t get my 1,000-yen deposit back!
(0)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. Continue reading ‘March Powder Fest’
Flying out to Sapporo for snowboarding tomorrow. Will hit an onsen this weekend, then session Kokusai and wherever else all week and hit Niseko the weekend after. It was -20C and dumping snow in town a couple of weeks ago, but it has returned to just below freezing now. There might be some snow starting up at the beginning of next week, so I might luck out. I should have jinxed it by packing my park board.
Good night.
Today was our last snowboarding day in Whistler for this trip. We were up early to queue up or the Whisler gondola, but there was still a long line. All the American long-weekenders, fair weather Canadian snow hounds, and local Vancouverites displaced by the closing of two of the town mountains to preserve the snow for the Olympics were represented in vast numbers. Avalanche conrol was sill bombing the mountain when we got up top, but the peak chair was running, so that was a good sign that they were opening the alpine areas. We took a warm-up run down green, but everything was amazingly chopped up, even though it was early. The lift queue was nuts! Continue reading ‘Saigo no Yuki no Hi’
The powder poaching pirates were denied their booty!
Continuous overnight snows laid arond 50cm of new snow on top of what was already there, with another 15cm or so predicted to fall during the day until the system passes around noon. We headed out to make the lift opening at 08:30, slogging through the slush laden village mall to queue up in the crazy Whistler gondola line. All the lights on the status indicator were at standby or closed, and the gondola was not moving. Some time after lift opening time, the Blackcomb gondola started moving, but not loading. Over an hour after lift opening time, a liftie came out and said that there was a tree across the upper gondola line, and this in conjunction with bad weather, meant that Whistler would be only open from base to midstation, and it would be almost an hour until the gondola would actually open. Continue reading ‘Repel Boarders!’
Guess there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Were not bothering with trying to get onto Whistler-Blackocomb mountains today, too much snow! 50cm+ and still going.
That’s a good sign! I don’t think the freezing level was forecast to be this low, but during the walk to dinner, the drizzle in Whistler Village turned to a light flurry. The temperature has dropped a little more, and the falling snow is piling up instead of melting away. This portents well for riding conditions tomorrow! Woo hoo!