12:45 we are finally at Solitude having trading the Caravan for a Ford Flex AWD. In the parking lot eating 7-11 sandwich.
Archive for the 'Snow' Category
Page 5 of 14
So here it is1:30am after the 11hr drive, instead of a AWD SUV we have a Dodge Caravan, had a awesome dinner of San Fransisco sourdough with canned Chey Boyardie ravioli and a supermarket brand tomato basil bisque soup, and finally Dave goes to get a much wanted shower when the spigot head falls off. WTF!
After 11 hr drive we’ve finally made it. Only rental left at Slc is a dodge caravan. It’s starting to snow seriously. Dinner of champs.
Hanging out at SFO with a couple more hours till our connector to SLC. Hopefully the forecast snow pans out. Stay tuned
You know it’s going to be a good snow day when you have to use the bootpack just to get from the ticket window to the gondola base!
I caught the first bus to Sapporo Kokusai on Monday to get a last riding day in before leaving. The bus lady said that if the resort was closed, the bus would return to Sapporo – after all, it was so early that the employees probably hadn’t shown up at the resort yet, so there was no way to check this early. Everyone was apparently sleeping in late, as I had the entire bus to myself on the drive over. Still, the bus lady got on the PA for the announcements: She could have just come over and told me directly… Continue reading ‘Choke-tastic’
You either have to stay the whole season or be really lucky to get an awesome powder day in Niseko. When I got there on Friday, the snow was falling heavily, but the high winds that are typically associated with the storms that bring in the snow closed the resorts for the day. The winds were nowhere near as bad as the time I was there several years ago and got blocked on my last riding day, so at least the snow was accumulating instead of blowing away to cover the surrounding farming plain. Continue reading ‘Typical Niseko’
Of course, having the word “desert” in the name is a dead giveaway that the Danner Desert Acadia GTX boots were not originally designed for snow use, but the Gore-Tex liner kept my feet dry and warm with just regular mid-weight wool hiking socks in -10C weather. My feet were warm even standing for extended peroids of time in deep snow. The Vibram Sierra sole worked fine in loose snow and on packed snow, but on freshly snowplowed roads where the black ice had been exposed, they were crazy slippery. Granted it’s ice, but my Danner 453 hikers actually had more traction on the same surface. I’m not going to even get into whether siping the sole blocks like snow tires or using a harder/softer compound would make them work better in a winter environment. I’ll be looking into whether Lowa or someone else makes a snow/ice Gore-Tex boot. Continue reading ‘Slippery Boots of Death’
Okay, landed fine. The pilot clarified that the level of snowfall in itself wasn’t preventing operations at the airfield, but cloud cover and visibility might make him abort landing. Visibility was fine, and turbulence actually not bad. THe runway was a bit rough from the compacted snow, but other than that, the landing went off without a hitch. Hooray!
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