If, on an icy night, a boarder

Niki Skijo, Thursday, 5pm.

I've been fortunate out here in Japan to have some really awesome ALTs really close to where I live. Though I don't spend that much time with my closest ALT over in Yoichi, the next one down the road in Niki has come to be a good bud of mine. Perry often accompanies us on our mad adventures around the island. He's a very laid back dude from Edmonton who arrived in Japan at the same time as our JET group back in the summer of 2009, and he always seems to be game for pretty much anything...particularly when it involves snowboarding.

As Perry's fruit-growing town of Niki (know for its apples, mostly, but also its cherries) is only about an hour, at most, by bus from Furubira, I jumped on an invitation from Perry last week to come in for some night snowboarding at the tiny Niki skijo. In Hokkaido, pretty much any town with a hill near it has its very own ski hill. However, in cases like Furubira's, or neighbouring Bikuni's, many of the ski hills in the smaller towns no longer operate due to a lack of steady enough business to keep the lifts running. Fortunately Niki has managed to keep its skijo open while the rest of us have been shutting ours down.

Niki hasn't got much in the way of lifts (only a single, one-person chair), but the hill is planned out in such a way as to make maximum use of that one dinky lift. As a mid-winter warm spell had hit these parts on Wednesday and had driven the temperatures above freezing for the first time in what seems like months, all of the snow heaped about had started melting. This meant that, by the time Perry and I reached the hill on Thursday evening, the temperatures had dropped back down below zero and the surface conditions were pretty damn icy.

Fortunately, I managed not to fall flat on my ass where it counted, despite the runs at Niki being my first on my new Ride Revolt bindings (which I had to buy to replace the 10-11 year-old Burton bindings that had come with my 8000円 Charger board). I imagine that would have been significantly less fun than all of the hurtling down the hill we did on the slick surface. We were able to find a few pockets of powder...ish, but the warm temperatures had caused it all to go heavy, making turning in it a herculean task.

It was a really good night of boarding, even if the conditions weren't perfect. We were able to get in about three solid hours (which felt a lot longer), and it was enough to convince me to head back to Niki when the conditions are a little better.

The sun setting just as I arrived at Niki Skijo.

Same, as seen through rose-coloured goggles ;)

Perry on the littlest lift that could, above the icy, icy slope below.

2010 - 2011 Mountain Day 11