Ugh. Although it was fun at Snowbasin, I took a coreshot from running over a obscured or hidden rock.
Coreshot!
Luckily, I had the stuff to do a field repair, just had to go buy a lighter from the store.
Fixed!
Ready for action again!
Archive for the 'Snow' Category
Page 12 of 14
So after a pretty good day at Brighton, we decided to take a visit to Park City to check out that area. We arrive to find that the Window price is $50, thats 30% off the regular price, what a bargain!
Well, maybe.
I guess this sign should have been a sign. But we came all this way, might as well check it out right?
There are only 2 lifts open, so we pick the highspeed 6-pack and take stock of the conditions
Hmm, this isnt looking so good, but we’re still optimistic, right up until we hit the top of this lift.
OMG! Okay, we’re here, we’ve gotta check it out. Yeah, this one “groomer” is made of concrete-hard icy stuff. No off-piste opportunity to be found.
I dont think we even needed the map at this point, there was really only one way down.
Bits of a terrain park are open too, but its fairly big stuff. At least these guys are having fun
After pounding the “groomers” a few times, its about time for lunch. I gotta say the rice with this chicken quesadilla was really really good. But the Draft Beer guy didnt get setup with beer yet! I had my hopes up after seeing his sign!
After lunch, Root decides his spine needs a rest, so goes off to look for a locker. I feel a disturbance in the force, and he appears shortly later exclaiming, “How much for a pack of double-a batteries?!” (as quoted from Falling Down) Apparently it cost $7 to rent a day locker!
The value for my $50 lift ticket was poor. Lunch was generally good, but kind of spendy, but not having the beer really puts a dent into whatever value was there. The $7 lockers was really over the top!
I might give Park City another chance during the prime season since the gelande seems pretty big, but the early season gets 2 out of 5 fist raising, power fighting monkeys. And it gets the 2 because the rice was that good.
I was debating whether to go out today or not. On the way back home from dinner at Ubusuna Okinawa Ryouri, it was raining in town, so my guess was that if the same weather system was over the entire adjacent area, there would be snow falling at Kokusai. The morning webcam check was inconclusive, and in fact showed wet roads indicating rain out at Nakayama Touge, so I was not excited. Waffling over breakfast, I decided to go for it, and it ended up being a good call. Heading out on the expressway, the mountians above Teine were clouded in. Onze was scraped away to dirt, and Asarigawa was pretty much melted away at the bottom. Heading up the valley past the dam, there was fresh snowfall just past the first snow shed where the freezing level started. Kokusai was pretty much abandoned – heck, until the second stop, I had the bus completely to myself, aside from the driver and ticket girl! I geared up and headed out just as the ground opened. It was just under zero C at the bottom which was a good sign. Continue reading ‘Socked in in Sapporo’
Okay, clear skies and no new snow overnight, and my legs are somewhat tired from yesterday. I think I’ll head down to the otaku district and look for some manga and toys today. It’s supposed to get cloudy in the afternoon, so there should be some new stuff tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll head out tomorrow. No sense wasting my energy and $40 for unnecessary punishment today.
(0)No amount of running can get you on the 07:20 bus for Sapporo Kokusai when you’re still on the subway train at 07:20. Luckily there was a second bus at 08:20. I stopped by 7-11 for bevvies and second breakfast, and went over to the bus terminal to wait for the next bus. Considering how late I was, the wait wasn’t long. There was ongoing tunnel repairs along the Jouzankei route, so the early season bus was running out toward Otaru on the Sasson expressway, then heading up the back way from Asarigawa onsen. Onze was pumping out their base with snow making machines, but only had one run operational. Asarigawa ski area looked pretty good on top, but was mostly grass toward the base. This route seemed quicker than the Jouzankei route, and if I didn’t already know how close the Sapporo area snow areas were to each other, seeing them along the way would really drive this home. Continue reading ‘Hot Tuesday’
Headed over to hilly Shiroishi yesterday to go to the big outdoor store in search of Snow*Peak stuff. It was easy to find, but a bit of a walk from the chikatetsu eki. It was a bit chilly out for my old-school Polartec fleece, but too hot for the jacket I left behind. Definitely time for some Windstopper fleece. They had everything I needed, and the dude was helpful even though my Nihongo was terrrible. Part of the issue was pronouncing things “American” and not “Japanese”, like Nalgene as “nal-jean” as opposed to “na-ru-gen”. I guess it’s no worse than Americans pronouncing “Tokyo” with three syllables. Continue reading ‘Gear Hound’
I dropped off Fabio and Root at HNL this evening, then came back home to finish packing to head out to Ezo tomorrow. There was no electricity from H3 to Fabio’s due to that red crane stored in the vacant lot after the Maunawili intersection toppling and taking out the powerlines and almost crushing two tourists in a Jeep. Root and Fabio were waiting in the dark. The crew balked at joining me in Sapporo when the return of fuel surcharges raised the JAL ticket prices above the $800 USD mark., so they headed off to Salt Lake City to check on the conditions there instead. Sapporo has been pretty snow free for the past few weeks, so things were looking rather dire, but it started snowing in the mountains about a week and a half ago, so I should find a half-meter base at Kokusai and Teine, and about 30cm at Kiroro. There doesn’t seem to be a high likelyhood of fill-in snow next week, so I may end up riding krunk.
Since I destroyed my old HiFi in Japan this past March, I’ve been in need of a replacement. My old one was around a hundred USD from Island Snow Hawaii back when they sold snowboarding gear. I probably could have gotten it for less online, but I was buying locally where I could actually try the product on. Since the sizing was already taken care of, and there is no comprehensive local source for retail snowboarding gear anymore, I waited for a good deal online. The season is winding down and a lot of good stuff is going on sale. Besides, a hundred bucks intuitively is way too much to pay for what is essentially a piece of EPS from the PRC. I was looking last season, but I never managed to find a nice color in the proper size for a good price. This season there was a nice camo finish, and when it went on sale for 25% off at Backcountry I was tempted. Since the riding season is essentially over for me this year, I thought I’d give it a little while longer to see if the price would drop. The overall stock amount and size run looked good, so there was no rush. Continue reading ‘2008/09 Burton Red HiFi Helmet’
I can’t really be happy about this right now because of all the krapp that happened today. I broke my Oakley Wisdoms in Japan hitting my face on a tree branch. These Oakley Crowbar Asian-fit goggles came along on Brociety just in time. Yellow frame and black iridium lenses. Base lens tint looks like VR-28 color. Ventilation looks about as marginal as the Wisdom, so they should fog-up under similar circumstances. Foam fits my face nicely. Nice, shiny, and new. Whee. Okay, I’m a little happy… maybe. Continue reading ‘New Oakley Crowbar Snow Goggles’
Finally, I’m no longer “Mr. Astronaut-mummy-hands.” Got a new set of Burton AK gloves on sale from Dogfunk for 50% off. These current gloves are made much trimmer than the early generation version I had originally. I think the ones I had were the first generation Gore-Tex 3L taped gloves. Yes – taped! I’m not talking about a prefabricated Gore-Tex insert here – we’re talking Gore-Tex 3L fabric stitched together into a glove shell and seam-taped! The palms were a synthetic material that went cracky and peely after about the third use, but since this material was an overlay over the actual PTFE material, there was no waterproofing problem, so I didn’t bother getting warranty service on them. Many seasons later, the grippy material was pretty much worn away, leaving only the fuzzy substrate. I do know that this issue was cleared up the next year with a genuine leather palm Continue reading ‘Burton AK Throttle Gloves’