A nice finish.

The forecast was wrong again. We woke up to no new snow on the ground but we were heading up anyway of course.

The day started off with some groomers and some exploring in the trees. It wasn't all that great but there was still some fresh lines about albeit not all that light and fluffy.

Then about 11am it started puking hard out. The main gully run out that we had been hitting since we had been here was covered and when I put my hand down to feel what had fallen I think it almost came up to my wrist. It lasted about and hour or so and just refreshed everything.

So it was all go again after lunch. Still not as good as the first two days but still really fun. We kept hitting our favourite two runs that we lapped on the powder days and it was still good. We got fresh lines too which is pretty amazing on a Saturday afternoon at a ski hill.

The sun even came out for the last few runs which just opened up the vis and gave us some nice views.

Typically is has been snowing pretty much since the hill closed which means tomorrow will be nice too. We have had a good run but it's always hard to leave on the eve of another pow day!

It's going to be another long travel day. Two flights and a few transfers that will probably be about 15 hours or so of sitting around. It's a small price to pay though.

So the obvious question on a trip like this is which was your favourite. Not an easy question to answer.

The best skiing was the catskiing in Revelstoke. But you would expect that since I paid the big bucks. Steep, deep and fresh. Totally the best day skiing ever.

But the best skiing on a ski hill is probably going to have to go to Rusutsu. It's a close thing between Mt Baker and Rusutsu though. I remember Baker as being generally steeper and the snow was amazing and deep. But it probably got tracked out a bit quicker than Rusutsu. Here you can ski the same area over and over and over and still get amazing fresh turns. Also I love skiing trees and all the good stuff here is trees.

Every place had it's special attributes though and I was lucky enough to find the "white room" many times in each one.

Now it's time to start planning for the next trip....

Groomers are fun too

We woke up to blue skies and no new snow today. Not exactly what we needed for continuing our powder quest. Nevermind I don't mind hitting the occasional groomer, esp with they are still corduroy. The groomers are pretty wide so big fast turns are the most fun.

There was still powder to be had of course. Ducking into the trees showed us some slightly heavier snow, and some of the slopes facing the wind had been affected a bit too. But with a bit of searching in different areas there were still lots of pow turns. Just not as epic as yesterday.

Also the legs are starting to feel it. End of a long trip and the last few days have been pretty full on too.

I rode with Bruce again today. We spilt off and regrouped throughout the day depending on which runs were calling our names. It's a good system.

All we need now is for some more snow tonight to finish things off with a bang. It is in the forecast but i'm not sure if it will hide the tracks from today. You never know though.

Tonight I decided to head over to the indoor pool at the resort hotel across the road. Rusutsu has this massive resort complex with an amusement park, lots of restaurants and activities for the family. The shopping area is set up like a european city, it's very strange but maybe also very Japanese.

Anyway the pool is a wave pool so we had a bit of fun on that. Plus it also has a waterslide. The main reason for going over though was the spa, hopefully it has made a difference on the muscles. One last push tomorrow.

The gift that keeps giving

Another incredible powder day at Rusutsu. I'm not sure on the figures since I can't seem to find any (even on the Rusutsu website) but I think "plenty" would do.

It snowed pretty much all day in varying degrees of intensity. Generally the vis was slightly better than yesterday though and maybe the wind had dropped a tad.

The mountain still has tracks on it, so the snow hadn't completely filled it in but it didn't really effect things too much. Still plenty of deep turns.

Overall I probably had a better day today than yesterday. We managed to ride with some of the other guys from the hostel and they showed us some of their favourite lines. Nothing too secret, just variations on areas we were already riding.

We only really skied two areas all day, they were just too good to bother with anything else. I did the first few laps on my own and then continued with the others once we hooked up. Bruce was also pretty much back in the thick of things too which was cool. We did hit up some other sections the boys had discovered during their time here but the only once each.

If the snow keeps falling for the next few days then Rusutsu is headed to the Hall of Fame in it's first attempt!

No photos today, too busy riding ;O)

Rusutsu Ichiban!

Today would be our first day in Rusutsu. When I planned the Japan portion of this trip I always had Rusutsu on my mind. Actually it was the main destination with Niseko being a fall back incase the internet was just full of lies.

We got a Ski Japan transfer from Niseko to our new accommodation called the Powder Lodge. It's bascially a big guest house, only one set of bathroom facilities for the 6 or so rooms. A very house feel to the place.

We pretty much got here and headed up the hill, probably started skiing about 11am.

Rusutsu is made up of three mountains. East, West and Isola. But Isola is really the only one we are interested in, it's the biggest and has all the good tree runs. We headed straight there and got started on what turned out to be a pretty amazing day.

Powder and tree runs is what was advertised and that is what we got today. Some crazy deep turns too. Hooray!

Most of tree runs I found today ran either side of the lift lines. Mostly into a valley that you could take out or onto another run. Overall it was easy to naviage and i only got stuck once.

Actually my first few tree runs I was worried I was going to get lost or end out having to walk out but after a while I realised it's pretty much all good.

Also compared to Niseko there is no one here! Strangely enough some of the people in the accommodation were commenting that it was a little more crowded! Go figure. There were definitely less people tracking up the trees than in Niseko so that was good news.

I skiied a few hours in the morning on my own then caught up with Bruce for some runs in the arvo. He was back in the trees and enjoying the pow; it was good to ride with a buddy again.

We managed to get some video going on this one line but the best run of the day was left to the end of the day. Basically a run from the top of Mt Isola through the trees into the valley between Mt Isola and East Mt. Big spaced trees, nice and steep and bottomless pow turns. Epic run.

The valley between Isola and East Mtn.

In one foul swoop the crust in Niseko was forgotten and we have our fix of that famous Japanese pow. If we left now I would be happy. Unfortunately for us we have another three days.

Last day at Niseko already!

We had planned 3 days at Niseko but lost a day on Sunday so today was it. My plan today was to try and ski in all four areas of the resort. Bruce came out again today too, unfortunately the visibility was quite low this morning so he decided to wait out the morning to see if it improved.

I headed over the Hanazono first up and the vis was actually good over there, esp on the lower chair and in the trees. I lapped strawberry fields a few times and got some nice turns in there. Then I decided to try and head over to the other places.

It was always going to be a tough one cos lots of the upper chairs were closed due to the winds. I did make it across to the third area called Niseko Higashiyama. It was pretty much deserted there and lots of the chairs were running. Only the Gondola and a few lower chairs and they were all going at a snails pace. I did find a few nice pow runs though so I was happy.

My final goal of reaching the 4th area Niseko An'nupuri didn't happen. The vis was pretty non existent up high and I couldn't find the bus stop for the free bus. Next time.

I finished the day with a few runs down Niseko Hirafu (where our accommodation was). It was pretty tracked but still heaps of fun with lots of soft snow still about due to the white out conditions driving people away. That was another good thing today; no queues ;O)

I finished up the day about 4pm cos I needed to make sure I could find an ATM. Bruce pulled in about half an hour later! I guess he must be finding his legs again!

So that was Niseko. Our timing was off but it was still fun. Hopefully Rusutsu will give us the amazing pow that we are craving.

You can sleep when you are dead

I was up at 7am this morning which means probably only about 4 hours sleep. It didn't matter though. We were here for one thing and that was to ski the pow. I looked outside and it was pretty clear; with all this snow about it could be a good day.

Breakfast is included in our package in Niseko so I managed to get Bruce out of bed for that but he crashed out again after that, I said I would check back with him at lunch to see if he was coming up.

Four hours isn't a bad amount of sleep to have, I felt fine actually. I'm sure the brisk mountain air and clear skies helped though. Trouble is it looks like everyone else had the same idea. Apparently the lines were as big as they get; and they were massive.

Once I did get to the top I was treated to some nice views of Mt Yotei though. I thought I better take the opportunity to take some photos of it cos i'm sure every other day is going to be snowed in ;O)

As you might expect the Japanese skiing experience is slightly different from skiing in other places. Some interesting points that come to mind.

- They seem very averse to risk. Some of the big tree sections are considered backcountry areas and has some strict rules surrounding them. This is a well known fact to anyone researching skiing in Japan though so it was no surprise. The reality of it is that there are plenty of trees to ski so I didn't really find it an issue.

- The lifties are very courteous. They are intent on making sure the chairs are devoid of any snow. Thankfully most of the chairs are detachable high speed chairs (although generally a little older than the ones in North America) so they have plenty of time. On the couple of occasions I rode a fixed one they were so focused on cleaning the chair that slowing the chair down ended up taking a back seat which resulted in it crashing into my leg; I made sure I helped out with that task from then on

- Most of the more modern chairs are hooded which says something about the weather they have here. They generally had older chairs here though, even some singles. I didn't see any tow ropes though (thank goodness)

- They make lots of announcements over loudspeakers which are attached to the lift towers. Most of the time I can't understand a word, it's a combination of english being a second language and the massive echoing effect.

All of these things enhance the experience of skiing in a foreign place I reckon. But culture wasn't the reason for coming though!

Unfortunately we were not seeing Niseko at it's best today. The was snow about but the wind and the morning crowds had really dealt to my powder dreams. Plenty of potential though.

Niseko United is actually 4 different areas, I only skied the Grand Hirafu side today, my favourite was the Hanazono area which is over the ridge from the village I was staying in. It had a nice "backcountry area" called Strawberry Fields. Some nice snow in there.

Bruce actually managed to come up for a few runs after lunch but the ankle is still not 100%. I suppose there was only a small chance it was going to recover before the end of the trip. We did some runs down the greens and then called it at about 3ish.

So an average first day, mainly exploring the place. Hopefully we get some more snow tomorrow.

More fun and games at the airport

We had been told that the check in for the our 1840 flight would open at 11am today. That would work nicely cos then we could check in and our bags and be free of them for the rest of the day.

Of course that was never going to work when they were still having weather problems in Sapporo! So we decided to check our bags into left luggage and find something to do. I managed to find a Laox store in a nearby mall (only two stops on the train) so we headed there to kill a few hours. Laox is a duty free electronics place like the one we bought our cameras from in Tokyo. This one wasn't as big though. That didn't stop purchases from being made though! Bruce managed to find himself a BB firing Desert Eagle pistol to go with the BB's he got on the last visit to Tokyo. We'll see how customs goes with that in his luggage!

We killed more time buy having lunch there too but when we came back at about 3ish it was still on hold.

Sometime around 6ish they made an announcement that check-in would be commencing at 6:30. Promising stuff. The flight was rescheduled for 9pm. Of course this meant we would be getting in quite late to the airport which made me wonder about our pickups. We decided to go anyway.

The flight finally got away about 9:30, I pretty much crashed out for the duration of the 1:40 flight. When we got off the plane we could see why there had been problems; there were big piles of snow everywhere. I suppose we are lucky we got here today at all.

Then while we were waiting for our luggage, an announcement comes over the intercom that there isn't any transportation from the airport tonight (it was about midnight at this stage) and everyone will need to sleep in the airport tonight. They had set up a room upstairs with blankets etc.. Thankfully for us the Ski Japan people were still there and they still had a bus for us. TOTAL relief! I didn't fancy losing a nights sleep on the airport floor.

The bus trip to Niseko was still a 2.5 hour journey though. The bus was full too so I'm sure no-one was completely comfortable but i'm also sure we were all loving that we were on our way.

By the time we got to our room it was about 3am. Asleep by 3:30am. A long, long day.

Kudos to the Ski Japan reps for lasting the distance with us.