Sayonara Tokachidake and Konnichiwa Otaru

We loaded up the van, said Sayonara to Tokachidake and headed to the city of Otaru (around 4 hours from hotel to hotel.)  For the next 6 nights we will be staying in the Grand Park Hotel in Otaru.  The hotel is located above a large mall and we decided to wander and enjoy the Japanese mall scene.

We will never grow up!

Friday morning was very windy and snowing so we decided to ski the local ski area of Asari.  It was about 15 minutes from our hotel and knew we would be able to get some fresh turns.  When we arrived to Asari there were 6 buses full of Japanese children and we thought we made the wrong choice.  None of these kids were there to poach the fresh snow from the night before.

Julien and his new friends.

Small mountain, but great short shots through the trees.

Now that we were accustomed to the Japanese way of skiing an Onsen was in order so we stopped by a hotel to enjoy the hot springs.  After the hot springs we decided we didn't have enough skiing for the day and decided to hit up another local ski area (Tenguyama) for some night skiing.  To our surprise they only had a tram running which allowed for some long steep night laps.

Night Tram

Otaru at night

Julien loves Tenguyama.

The snow report in the morning at Kiroro read 0 cm overnight, but we headed up the mountain road 45 minutes to see for ourselves.  That snow report was way off as 30 cm of new snow had fallen overnight and we were ready to ski the goods.

Leif getting after it.

Pat messing around in the deep snow about to spray the cameraman.

Pat deep in the snow spraying the cameraman.

Julien no longer practicing the Tomahawk.

After the first two runs, we ran into a few skiers asking us to not ski in they're lines as they were filming.  We of course asked what they were filming for and it was the TGR (Teton Gravity Research) crew skiing the deep snow at Kiroro for next years ski movie.  Always a good sign to be skiing in an area where pro riders are at.

Pat hiking to earn those turns.

Ben on the last run of the day.

We explored the great trees of Kiroro getting in all sorts of different fun shots of deep snow.  By 4:00 pm the group was ready to head back to the hotel for a quick Onsen and be ready for a new day in the wonderful world of Hokkaido.

arigato gozaimas

-Ben