Hakuba has many beautiful sides and unfortunately also a few dark sides: A glance at the globe shows that southern Spain is at the same latitude as Hakuba, so it's not surprising that the sun is already pretty strong in January. Many a European has wondered how impressive a Japanese sunburn can be in January. As soon as we see the blue sky here, the southern slopes have usually already become unskiable, as the snow is literally baked by the sun.
This week we got our first taste of spring and so the first tours were announced. I've never seen so many tourers here before. There were already a lot of them last year, but now it feels like European touring conditions. The descent was still pretty good, but the lowest part already resembled a mogul slope. This time, however, the first sunny day was not quite as warm as usual and so we were able to make exceptional descents on the south-facing slopes. Simply brilliant.
The river crossings are still problematic and require skill and sometimes a good dose of luck: we have made a few videos to illustrate this a little.
Videos - Japanese Pow and Japanese Rivers
Unfortunately, it was far too warm from Thursday onwards and the avalanche risk was too high. So it was time to relax a little and do something different. On Friday and Saturday it even rained all the way up and Sunday was more comfortable in a warm bed than in the spring snow on completely overcrowded slopes. It's Chinese New Year and all hell breaks loose here.
Japan - country and people
We drove to the Shiga Kogen area, just under two hours away, where the famous "snow monkeys" can be found. A fantastic experience and an ideal supporting program when the snow is not as good as we would like it to be. Once again, pictures speak louder than words.
