Caught the bus out to Sapporo Kokusai yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 It was clear and sunny as was the day before.\u00c2\u00a0 I still managed to find some untracked riding in the center bowl and in the secret trees, but it was settled, old powder – fun, but not wonderful.\u00c2\u00a0 The sunny-side faces were windpacked and had a melt-crust, but the sheltered sides were\u00c2\u00a0fine.\u00c2\u00a0 I took a break and had a “pizza-nan” and coffee set (750 yen) at the little snack shop at the top of the gondola (they used to be down midway by the slow old pair lifts, but moved to a more accessible location).\u00c2\u00a0 I had a little incident with the paper tube of sugar for my coffee.\u00c2\u00a0 While shaking it gently from the end to clear some air space to tear it, the paper disintegrated – sending granulated sugar everywhere.\u00c2\u00a0 Darned those foreigners!\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t they know how to open a paper tube of sugar?\u00c2\u00a0 Lucily nobody saw me do this, and\u00c2\u00a0I managed to clean it all up.\u00c2\u00a0 Food was more snack-sized.\u00c2\u00a0 Probably a bit pricy for what I got.\u00c2\u00a0 (B)\u00c2\u00a0 The clear sky had turned a little\u00c2\u00a0hazy by the time I got done with lunch.\u00c2\u00a0 A\u00c2\u00a0hint of snow began to fall.\u00c2\u00a0 On the bus ride home, the haze in the sky was becoming more pronounced – snow was on the way.\u00c2\u00a0 Dinner was sausage, kraut, some kind of gratin thing, and sauerbraten at a German restaurant.\u00c2\u00a0 Had a good hefe-weisen too… can’t recall the name right now… Georg Someone & Sohn…\u00c2\u00a0 All the food was really good (A, except the sauerbraten which was an A-).\u00c2\u00a0 Around 7000 yen\u00c2\u00a0for everything including beer, dessert and coffee.<\/p>\n
This morning, there was new snow on the veranda railing.\u00c2\u00a0 Sore legs or not, I was going to hit Kokusai.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a good 5cm of unsettled new snow in the street, and a continuing flurry ongoing.\u00c2\u00a0 Jamming into the morning rush-hour subway with my snowboard bag and B\/C pack,\u00c2\u00a0 I headed off to the bus stop.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a little funny how you can just smash in against a bunch of salarymen to get just inside the door in these situations here and nobody even\u00c2\u00a0bats an eyelash.\u00c2\u00a0 As I was getting in this morning, some tiny little old grandma just ninja-ed in front of me and stole my spot!\u00c2\u00a0 WTF!\u00c2\u00a0 I had to give some suit the shoulder and another one a backpack to the face to get inside in time!\u00c2\u00a0 It was snowing lightly at the bus stop, but heading out of town, the snowfall went from a light flurry to a good dump.\u00c2\u00a0 The round-trip bus ride and a one-day lift ticket was 4600 yen.<\/p>\n
At Kokusai, there was about 15-20cm of unsettled snow at the base.\u00c2\u00a0 When I dropped my board in the snow to get my lift ticket, it disappeared into the new snow!\u00c2\u00a0 The top was deeper.\u00c2\u00a0 I dropped into the same secret trees as yesterday, but immediately came upon a person-high windlip right under the gondola.\u00c2\u00a0 Needless to say it was impassible.\u00c2\u00a0 It got this nice person-shaped\u00c2\u00a0imprint on it as I went full-bore down into it.\u00c2\u00a0 I was making a 20-30cm deep track as\u00c2\u00a0I dropped through the\u00c2\u00a0trees,\u00c2\u00a0but there was still way more\u00c2\u00a0new snow below that.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It was soft and silent – like flying in ground-effect.\u00c2\u00a0 popping out onto the groomer, there was still at least 5cm of new snow over the early morning corduroy.\u00c2\u00a0 I hit\u00c2\u00a0the left side of the downhill course where there was 50-70cm of\u00c2\u00a0unsettled accumulation in spots.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00c2\u00a0was pointing it straight downhill on a 45-degree slope and putting about 90% of my weight on my back leg and leaning back past the tail.\u00c2\u00a0 The ride was as amazing\u00c2\u00a0as the intense back-leg burn.\u00c2\u00a0 I rode off-piste until noon, took a break for another Nan-pizza, rode some more,\u00c2\u00a0got a 680 yen\u00c2\u00a0kakiage-tempura soba, then rode until my leg gave out.<\/p>\n
The sky in town was back to clear by sunset, so the should be no\u00c2\u00a0new snow tomorrow.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0That’s a little of a bummer since I’m off to Niseko tomorrow.\u00c2\u00a0 Supposedly\u00c2\u00a0there will be snow all weekend though.\u00c2\u00a0 Dinner today was kaiten sushi in Susukino (A-) for around 3500 yen, and dessert and coffee at\u00c2\u00a0the fruit-cake shop (B).\u00c2\u00a0 No, not fruitcake – like cake, but with fruit on top.\u00c2\u00a0 That was around 1500 yen for two cakes and two coffees.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Caught the bus out to Sapporo Kokusai yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 It was clear and sunny as was the day before.\u00c2\u00a0 I still managed to find some untracked riding in the center bowl and in the secret trees, but it was settled, old powder – fun, but not wonderful.\u00c2\u00a0 The sunny-side faces were windpacked and had a melt-crust, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,13,16],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-a5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}