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skijay's Journal
Rain stopped play - Plus a blizzard - Hakuba Goryu
By skijay 20 Feb 2009Woke up to close to a foot of snow falling in Happo One, and expectations and morale were high. It snowed all the way as we walked to the Mominoki Hotel, where we waited for the shuttle to Hakuba Goryu. Note to self - when the Iimori bus arrives (15 minutes before the Goryu bus) Jump on it, as Iimori is literally one of the lifts in Goryu!! Forgot about this - Iimori is actually my favourite green run.
We all hopped on the shuttle bus and watched in dismay as the snow slowly turned into... rain!! It rained... and rained... and rained as we lined up to get our lift passes (Tip for punters: buy a lift pass one at a time - not in a group - it confuses the ticket person too much otherwise!!) It rained as we rode up in the gondola... and kept raining as we rode the top area of Goryu (intermediate red runs). There had obviously been a good fall of powder the night before, because we couldn't see the corduroy of the groomed runs, which made it all the more frustrating, because the powder was wet - and wet powder is not fun to ride at all! it is kind of like trying to ride over trifle - the consistency of mixed jelly and sponge cake and cream. Yeuugh.
We persisted until about 10:30am when most of us ended up in the 360 restaurant at the summit, to have an early lunch. Plus we had to dry off - we were soaking wet from the rain! As we ate our fried chicken and drank our hot chocolate/sake/beer, something strange happened outside - it started snowing (not so strange) then the snow started going horizontally... now that's strange! Mmm I think that would be called a blizzard!! Before we could gather up all our gear and head happily outside into the snow, Ski patrol came round to tell us all to get off the mountain asap, as lifts were closed, there were high winds and blizzard conditions, and the gondola down was about to stop running as well!!
We ran outside to make sure our boards hadnt flown off the mountain, as they were not secured. Luckily they were still where we left them, although I hardly "ran" outside as it took five minutes to get out the door because of high winds! We strapped on and headed down the Hakuba 47 side, as Ski Patrol instructed us to do. There was quite an element of adventure and I was actually a little bit scared!! The winds were pretty strong and it was snowing reasonably heavily but visibility was still moderate and the winds stopped once we got down a bit lower. We had to ski down some green runs, then a long cat track, followed by steep red runs at the end. My legs were burning - I had to stop a few times!! At the bottom, all was calm, it was STILL raining, and everyone was quite morose.
V&I headed back over to Iimori while everyone else called it a day and had beers instead. It was raining quite heavily at Iimori and lots of water got in between my goggle lenses so I could hardly see - it was better to board with them off instead. It kept raining and raining and the snow got wetter and wetter so after about a couple of hours we called it a day too and I ceremoniously ended my ski holiday with a Suntory Malt beer followed by a gander at the Ghibli shop.
All in all we did actually do a lot of boarding that day - All of Hakuba 47, and almost all of Goryu!!
We all hopped on the shuttle bus and watched in dismay as the snow slowly turned into... rain!! It rained... and rained... and rained as we lined up to get our lift passes (Tip for punters: buy a lift pass one at a time - not in a group - it confuses the ticket person too much otherwise!!) It rained as we rode up in the gondola... and kept raining as we rode the top area of Goryu (intermediate red runs). There had obviously been a good fall of powder the night before, because we couldn't see the corduroy of the groomed runs, which made it all the more frustrating, because the powder was wet - and wet powder is not fun to ride at all! it is kind of like trying to ride over trifle - the consistency of mixed jelly and sponge cake and cream. Yeuugh.
We persisted until about 10:30am when most of us ended up in the 360 restaurant at the summit, to have an early lunch. Plus we had to dry off - we were soaking wet from the rain! As we ate our fried chicken and drank our hot chocolate/sake/beer, something strange happened outside - it started snowing (not so strange) then the snow started going horizontally... now that's strange! Mmm I think that would be called a blizzard!! Before we could gather up all our gear and head happily outside into the snow, Ski patrol came round to tell us all to get off the mountain asap, as lifts were closed, there were high winds and blizzard conditions, and the gondola down was about to stop running as well!!
We ran outside to make sure our boards hadnt flown off the mountain, as they were not secured. Luckily they were still where we left them, although I hardly "ran" outside as it took five minutes to get out the door because of high winds! We strapped on and headed down the Hakuba 47 side, as Ski Patrol instructed us to do. There was quite an element of adventure and I was actually a little bit scared!! The winds were pretty strong and it was snowing reasonably heavily but visibility was still moderate and the winds stopped once we got down a bit lower. We had to ski down some green runs, then a long cat track, followed by steep red runs at the end. My legs were burning - I had to stop a few times!! At the bottom, all was calm, it was STILL raining, and everyone was quite morose.
V&I headed back over to Iimori while everyone else called it a day and had beers instead. It was raining quite heavily at Iimori and lots of water got in between my goggle lenses so I could hardly see - it was better to board with them off instead. It kept raining and raining and the snow got wetter and wetter so after about a couple of hours we called it a day too and I ceremoniously ended my ski holiday with a Suntory Malt beer followed by a gander at the Ghibli shop.
All in all we did actually do a lot of boarding that day - All of Hakuba 47, and almost all of Goryu!!
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