 |
 |
skijay's Journal
Hakuba was the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics and this comes to mind when you arrive here. There are plenty of cute Alpine style buildings, and a little village, but it is eeriely quiet. There is hardly anyone around!
(For a comparison of Niseko and Hakuba, see my next post. )
Happo One (pronounced Oh Nay, not One as in the Number One) is the central resort here and it is HUGE. There are about five different ski areas which are all easily accessible through a good connection of chairlifts. It is a steep mountain though - Not great for beginners, although there are some lovely flat green runs down the bottom of the mountain in the Sakka ski lift area. There are actually four grades of runs here - Green for beginner, Purple for Intermediate, Red for Advanced, and Black for Expert. There are also Orange "Olympic" runs (read: mostly mogul runs). The greens vary from easy to quite steep. The purples are steep and the reds are like blacks. I haven't attempted a Black yet!
The runs are very wide and long, and quite similar to Australian standards (apart from the steepness), being fairly featureless and not having many trees. It hasn't snowed for a week now and the state of the snow varies from manmade and slushy at the bottom, rocky in the middle, and somewhat softer and more powdery at the top. They are also very LONG (it's 8km from the top of the mountain to the bottom) and thigh burning!
It doesn't get very crowded here - you rarely have to line up for a chairlift, and it doesn't become a dodgem course unless you are on the green runs. The skiiers and snowboarders are mainly Japanese though we did see a couple of groups of "gaijin" (foreigners), but this is unusual.
We skiied the whole of the right side of the mountain in the morning, and I had a gigantic stack on a red run, landing on my right butt cheek on hard packed snow. Owwww!! Later in the morning, I was taken out by a novice snowboarder who crashed into me while I was boarding. First I heard an expletive, then I saw a blue blur, then I landed on my butt and onto my left shoulder and miraculously avoided a concussion or major injury.... But it was pretty scary and I lost my confidence, especially after my great stack only 1 hour before!
After lunch we discovered our favourite run, Panorama, which starts off with a steep short run, followed by a couple of bowls, which are incredibly wide and fun to zoom down, and if you are gung ho like V, you can do lots of jumps off the sides and the lips. Amazingly, even though some of it is fairly challenging, it's classed as a green run...!! I would think that at least part of it is an intermediate or advanced level...
After about 3:30pm something terrible happens to the snow... it freezes. All morning it is chopped up into rocks of various sizes, from tiny to huge, and in the afternoon when it gets colder, the rocks freeze.. and it feels like you are boarding on the road or something like that. Terrible. For some reason, we (the boys) decided to ride two chairlifts up to the top of the mountain and ski down the rock slopes... which I didn't like at all, as I was tired, in pain, miserable, and just wanted to get home. It was almost impossible to board down the steep slopes and I am very ashamed to say that I did the falling leaf for a good part of the way down.
Tomorrow we head to a nearby resort Hakuba 47. Stay tuned!
(For a comparison of Niseko and Hakuba, see my next post. )
Happo One (pronounced Oh Nay, not One as in the Number One) is the central resort here and it is HUGE. There are about five different ski areas which are all easily accessible through a good connection of chairlifts. It is a steep mountain though - Not great for beginners, although there are some lovely flat green runs down the bottom of the mountain in the Sakka ski lift area. There are actually four grades of runs here - Green for beginner, Purple for Intermediate, Red for Advanced, and Black for Expert. There are also Orange "Olympic" runs (read: mostly mogul runs). The greens vary from easy to quite steep. The purples are steep and the reds are like blacks. I haven't attempted a Black yet!
The runs are very wide and long, and quite similar to Australian standards (apart from the steepness), being fairly featureless and not having many trees. It hasn't snowed for a week now and the state of the snow varies from manmade and slushy at the bottom, rocky in the middle, and somewhat softer and more powdery at the top. They are also very LONG (it's 8km from the top of the mountain to the bottom) and thigh burning!
It doesn't get very crowded here - you rarely have to line up for a chairlift, and it doesn't become a dodgem course unless you are on the green runs. The skiiers and snowboarders are mainly Japanese though we did see a couple of groups of "gaijin" (foreigners), but this is unusual.
We skiied the whole of the right side of the mountain in the morning, and I had a gigantic stack on a red run, landing on my right butt cheek on hard packed snow. Owwww!! Later in the morning, I was taken out by a novice snowboarder who crashed into me while I was boarding. First I heard an expletive, then I saw a blue blur, then I landed on my butt and onto my left shoulder and miraculously avoided a concussion or major injury.... But it was pretty scary and I lost my confidence, especially after my great stack only 1 hour before!
After lunch we discovered our favourite run, Panorama, which starts off with a steep short run, followed by a couple of bowls, which are incredibly wide and fun to zoom down, and if you are gung ho like V, you can do lots of jumps off the sides and the lips. Amazingly, even though some of it is fairly challenging, it's classed as a green run...!! I would think that at least part of it is an intermediate or advanced level...
After about 3:30pm something terrible happens to the snow... it freezes. All morning it is chopped up into rocks of various sizes, from tiny to huge, and in the afternoon when it gets colder, the rocks freeze.. and it feels like you are boarding on the road or something like that. Terrible. For some reason, we (the boys) decided to ride two chairlifts up to the top of the mountain and ski down the rock slopes... which I didn't like at all, as I was tired, in pain, miserable, and just wanted to get home. It was almost impossible to board down the steep slopes and I am very ashamed to say that I did the falling leaf for a good part of the way down.
Tomorrow we head to a nearby resort Hakuba 47. Stay tuned!
1 Comments
|
Timbo
on 21 Feb 2007
Hey skijay and snowboys.
Good stuff! Watch out for a bunch of London Aussies there (there is a group of 30). Not sure where Hakuba is in relation to Niselo, but they were going to a resort in Hokkaido, but not Niseko.
|
Like to comment?
SIGN UP for a free account!
skijay's Posts
Rain stopped play - Plus a blizzard - Hakuba GoryuBy skijay on 20 Feb 2009
An Update on Resort Inn Alupu - Hakuba
By skijay on 1 Mar 2009
Day 4 Nozawa Onsen - Paradise
By skijay on 18 Feb 2009
