onji

Date: 10-11th of Dec 2011

Mt Tokachi / Daisetsuzan

Snow: about 10-20cm of fresh dry powder on day 1. Overnight we got maybe 50-80cm, I honestly don't know there was that much of it. On day 2 the dumping continued probably another 50cm or two. It basically didn't stop snowing for the 50-52 hours we were out of town.

Some friends and I went on a road trip 3 hours out of Sapporo to the centre of Hokkaido and setup camp near a natural hot spring at about 500m on the mountain. Setting up camp took a fair amount of time as we had to clear and stomp down a whole lotta snow to make some real estate for tents, followed by wood chopping for the fire.

After camp was setup we walked down the hill for a soak & a beer in the hot spring while it continued to dump.

After the hot spring we started a fire, cooked dinner and crashed out. Overnight the mercury dropped to a balmy -14°C.

On day 2 we ascended to about 1700m, before swapping snowshoes for boards. There wasn't enough light left in the day to summit, and a whiteout had dropped which was looking like it may turn into a snow storm.

The ride down was awesome. I honestly don't know how far down the powder went, but the stuff came up to my legs while riding. It was quite easy to posthole even with snowshoes and sink up to your waist. This was the deepest powder I've actually been in. Varying inclines and trees (including some waiting just under the surface of the snow) made it a challenging run down.

My mate Rob takes credit for these shots.

pjstyles

siiiick!!!

how long have you been living in Hokkaido?

dreampow

Camping in central Hokkaido in late December. Hardcore dude. If you had a big night you could get snowed in to your tent!

As much as I love pow I also like a nice warm futon. Looks like you had some epic pow. Hope we get some more before my first outing.

Is it steep all the way down the hill? wouldn't want to get stuck in deep pow out there.

Is your 157 TRice handling it OK, might be tricky if the pow gets sticky on you. Light fluffy pow?

onji

@PJ - I've been living here since April and loving every second of it!

@Drempow - Yeah mate, I was starting to feel pretty hardcore by the end of the trip

It was freezing in the tent, literally, the air temp inside must've been around -2 or -3C because my main gloves had frozen solid and so had the ice on my boots. I'll admit I was thinking about how awesome it would be to be in a king size bed with the women's Swedish volleyball team, but I had an awesome time camping out there.... I'm thinking about joining the boys for a 3 day trek next month.

Yes, the pow was epic... and at least 1.5m deep, my board was about 40-50cm deep the whole time down the hill. After seeing how well Travis Rice can flog that board I was confident it could handle pow that deep, I was just hoping that my skills would be up to it. So long as a kept the pressure back my 157 floated pretty well in the stuff, and I haven't even setback my bindings aft of the centre. I'm pretty sure it helped that the pow was super dry and super light, so very little stuck to my board.

With regards to the incline, I'd say it was usually in the 18 to 26 degree range, occasionally hitting 40s or as low as 13 or something.

What I did get caught on numerous times, though, were the tops of submerged trees. The ones where the entire tree is below the surface of the snow, but the top few branches are less than 20cm. Digging myself out was a c**t of a job! Damn those stealth trees

Here's a couple of pics of what our tents looked like in the morning.

Milo303

SO wish we were getting dumped on like this in CO

Good pics, glad you had fun and hopefully you took some video while riding

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"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion." - Abraham Lincoln

killclimbz

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