Boolugu Mez

9 days of Hokkaido goodness, and only about another 300 days of waiting around till I get to have some more time on snow...................................................................

Good Stuff

Nice One !

Good to see the freshness is back again!

No worries you guys, glad to be of service!

Don't worry Onehunga, your secret is safe For a minute there I thought you may have been channelling the ghost of Possum Bourne !

Nice one! Looks like you were testing the impreza's handling pretty well on that mountain pass! Resort does look fun, particularly like the look of the trees in the photo of the top area

So this would be ideal and what we (and essentially I suppose lots of other people reading the site) would like best. Thanks. Aha! I will update my TR and put it into the right spot then ( IE a more succinct version for the review section )

:rollabout: :rollabout: :rollabout: The poor guys, that would have been a pretty embarrasing situation for them to explain to the Chief back at the station........ I do sympathise as I can see how it might happen to anyone, but... :rollabout: :rollabout: :rollabout:

Cheers GVM, As to the pitch, up the top at the entrance to strawberry fields ( first photo) is fairly flat, then it rolls over into an average of maybe 20 - 25 deg, as you traverse across it gets progressively steeper ( photo 3 ) We came across a couple of spots that were maybe 35 deg at a guess. In places there are short pitches which are quite steep ( for me anyway ) You can get a bit of an idea of the pitch from this photo - using the tree in the foreground as a bit of a point of reference. The steepness & amount of trees in some areas kept me on my toes that's for sure.

Thanks Mike, glad you enjoyed the read

There wasn't people on those ships........ they were ships decomissioned after WW2 and set up specifically for the test, to see the effect of a bomb on a fleet. As to what happened to them, I'd say that anyone alive at the time of the tests and living almost anywhere on the globe is lucky enough to have a lovely little radioactive piece of them in their lungs, and the ones that were not vaporised would be nice little radioactive reefs helping to create many new and exciting mutations in the local marine ecosystem. Yay Science !! Yay Guvaments !!!

Umm, all of those videos seem to go for quite a while..... Could you please offer a simple dot point version for those of us with not so much time on our hands ( and short attention spans.... ohh look a puppy! )

Thanks Gunma & Pies, yeah the powder fields were uber-nice And SJ David - Thank You Sir for the excellent prize, I am eternally grateful :worship: :party:

No probs Seemore! My only regret is that I didn't get any decent footage as I left my camera charging the night before while I went out to dinner - but my PC went into sleep mode & it stopped charging up... oh well, there's plenty of good memories for now, will try next year for good footage!!

As a lucky recipient of one of the Hanazono Powder Guides “First Tracks Backcountry Tour” giveaway, recently offered by Snow Japan, I herewith gratefully submit my review of the experience- As a bit of preamble to provide some context and a background report on my trip in general, I was boarding with a group of friends in Niseko from February 10th ~ 19th, my second time visiting this region and once again staying in the Niseko Village area of the resort. We landed on snow mid way through an unusually dry spell which had hit this part of Hokkaido. We experienced some spectacular bluebir

We arrived at Tokyo Narita on 6am Sunday - bad timing....... Flights coming in all day but none going out, trains not running, roads to airport closed. Managed to get out of the airport at 8pm on a train that took 3 hrs to get into Tokyo due to the backlog of stranded trains ahead. Lets hope some falls on the resorts, I don't want to have a holiday where the biggest snowfall I saw was in Tokyo !!!!

Don't take it personally, you are certainly supporting the Japanese Snow Industry - it's the weather which isn't being supportive !!!

For going out to dinner I usually just wear jeans with my thermals underneath, ski jacket up top and some woolen gloves - only once I found that I got cold while waiting for the bus, on that occasion I a bit of a funky dance at the bus stop to warm up......

As a lucky recipient of one of the Hanozono backcountry tour prizes I am absolutely frothing at the thought of getting out there and using it !!! Will be in Hokkaido for w eek and a half starting next sunday - can't wait. It would be downright rude of me not to give something back in the form of a review / report of the excellent experience which has been so kindly bestowed upon me. Thanks again, and watch this space !! :ph34r:

Snow conditions aside you will definitely get much better driving performance and safety from an AWD with traction control - rain, gravel patches on road etc.. That's part of the reason why I'm such a fan of subaru

Don't live in snow country but am a Subaru die hard. All I have ever owned actually, and I have never had issues with reliability. My last one was an 1999 impreza sport model hatch, got it 2nd hand at ~ 100,000 km and drove it through to 195,000 km with no servicing in 6 years other than an oil change. Loved the grippy feeling of AWD and decent suspension. Would still be driving this car but I got T-boned at an intersection and was forced to upgrade to a newer model impreza. Have heard many good reports of AWD performance in snow conditions, and also the safety rating of the subarus is 5

Last time I was at Niseko I was coming down the upper part of the mountain and as I was around half way below the top lifts I saw a snowboard absolutely tearing down sans rider -- this thing had some serious steam and was bouncing over the chopped pow gaining speed as it went. Passed by about 15m in front of me and kept on going until it reached the flattish spot with trees just below Niseko Village gondola - it had travelled about 3/4 of the run of the top lift all by itself. My wife was higher up than I was and said she saw it cut loose when its owner took it off to help his girlfrie

Yup!