Two days later and 40 cm of new snow, we headed to the south face of Tokachidake to amass as many face shots as possible. We slapped on our skins and set off on a mild 45 minute ascent.
Ben and Ray skinning up above the hotel.
On our first run we met the baddest nordic skier in the land, Trigva who linked up and skied with us all day. It looks like we've got a place to stay in Norway! Although Trigva is from Norway he told us he is living in Hokkaido for an entire year, employed as a nordic skiing coach in a nearby town. Fun fact, he went to Denver University and was on the nordic skiing team. T ended up having quite a few mutual friends with Ray, small world.
Trigva testing out his alpine skiing skills
We lapped that southern slope all day, climbing over 2000 vertical feet putting the earn your turn mantra to the test but skiing neck deep powder over 5 amazing runs made it an everlasting experience. I'll let the pictures talk for themselves.
"The sport of skiing consists of wearing three thousand dollars' worth of clothes and equipment and driving two hundred miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and get drunk." - Patrick San
"Man, I can't wait to eat more noodles later" - J San
"This is Pow Planet" - Ben San
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As always we finish everyday with a long relaxing soak in the indoor/outdoor (rotenburo/notenburo) onsen at the Komihoroso lodge. The onsen is a hot spring bath that has over 20 minerals including sulfer, zinc, iron, etc and are said to have healing powers. Now we can't say for sure but the Japanese do seem to live forever while smoking like fish, so did we find the fountain of youth?
Outdoor Onsen at Kamihoroso
Indoor Onsen at Kamihoros
On our third day at Tokachidake we drove down the mountain, jumped across a creek and skinned up a beautiful winter wonderland of a forest to drop in from to two large ridges.
Foreground is an onsen lodge, background are the two ridges we skied from. We crossed a creek that flows down and to the right from this picture
Creek in Tokachidake area
Crossing the creek
Pat Owen and Leif Routman Skinning up to the ridge
2 happy campers after some snow sliding
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Conditions above tree-line that day were variable at best with high winds and very low visibility but we had our real world mountain men with Pat Owen, Leif Routman and Ray Bernardo to get us down safe, with a few pow turns here and there and pretty much everywhere along the way.
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| Tomahawk Lounis |
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| Patrick San |
Ben San
On our second run of the day we ran into a group of 3 americans all of which went to University of Colorado, so thats 4 people on the mountain out of 4 that went to a CO university...We finished the day with our usual onsen and another one of the absolutely amazing dinners at Komihoroso while imbibing in a 90 minute $12 all you can drink "free drink" (Still haven't figured out what the Japanese call it). We stayed up late with a couple of french swiss trading stories and making fun of the French Euro crew that came in late night like tornado leaving a mess in their wake, trashing the front halls, ignoring the Japanese customs and did we mention they were french...The next day we are off to Otaru to ski some Japanese resorts. Until then Sayonara! (Sayonara is apparently the Japanese word for goodbye, Julien, Ben and I thought is was Spanish).
-Patrick San
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