Determined to make up lost time on this slow season, Mark, Lindsay and I hit up Grand Hirafu on the Saturday of this past weekend, and then Lindsay and I hit up Annupuri on the Sunday for our first Niseko boarding weekend of the season. The conditions at Hirafu were both beautiful and fantastic in a sun-and-cloud-and-snow kind of way…though it got a little windy higher on the mountain. The snow persisted well into the night, and I think it helped me fall in love with night skiing a little bit. It was my first time doing it since something like Blue Mountain back in Ontario in the tenth grade, and Hirafu was a helluva place to do it as the portion of the mountain that is open for night skiing is bigger than some of the full areas other skijos open for day skiing.
The conditions on Annupuri on Sunday weren’t as hot (I’m used to the place being covered in amounts of fluffy white stuff that are best described as “obscene”), and it was very clear that we were still boarding in the early season. Still, it was really good to be able to work with Lindsay on getting better, and there were delicious burgers to be had, served hot and fresh out of the back of a Big White Pedophile Van. There were also onsens after, where the old insides were absolutely rotten with mineral deposits and the beginnings of moss, while the outsides were perfect rotenburo pools of hot situated between snowy waterfalls and snow forests. And then there was Lindsay driving into a ditch when a douchebag refused to yield the road. But there was also a hero of a Japanese guy who dragged us out of the ditch using a hook and a cable and his Toyota SUV, saying only the word “neutral” to us in the whole exchange, despite my I’m-sorry-we-killed-your-mafia-dog bowing.
Enough chatter, though. I actually brought my good camera with me for the first time, so here are some of the photos from Hirafu that I actually remembered to take. Annupuri on Sunday was a little less photographically salient.
2010 – 2011 Mountain Days 3&4
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