Saturday, February 14, 2009

No Snow Day

Today it reached the super warm temperature of 2 degrees here. Doesn't sound that bad, but in the grand scheme of things its pretty catastrophic here. Niseko is so low, the peak is only at 1156m, and the bottom of the mountain at 256m, so it needs to be very cold for the snow to stay as snow. The snow turns slushy and any precipitation is rain, and it belted down. Snow conditions were terrible and on top of that, most of the lifts were closed due to high winds. Perfect day eh!

After spending a morning in the lodge bored out of our brains, HB and I decided to switch gear so he used my skis, and I used his snowboard. Usually I would be completely against this - last time I tried it in NZ it was the worst day ever! Couldn't even stand up or go along or anything. But I needed to do something, so we went out there. Since then I've taken up surfing and what a difference that made. I could go down the hill (green runs), make turns, link them together all within about half an hour. Even made it down the hill one time without crashing. There were lots of other crashes though!!
Couldn't believe the improvement - I could actually do it! It was even kind of fun...but its snowboarding, so it was like going over to the dark side. I must say, it would be cool to be able to do both. But unless we get another shit day like today, it won't happen again!

Tomorrow is our last day here. We head to Tokyo on Monday for 4 or 5 days before heading out for some more skiing near Nagano for another week. Time is flying by, I'll be home in no time....unfortunately
It better snow tonight.

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