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.