montoya

yep, we might do some road-trips to the mountains around Myoko and Hakuba this year, if things come together..

tashiro's lot is free everyday. mitsumata, 1000/day for everyone on the weekends/holidays, regardless if you have a season pass or not. apparently it's a new thing.

Just wondering, do your season passes cover parking-fees? We got a big surprise when we looked at this year's Kagura passes, which cover parking only at one lot. Otherwise it's 1000yen on the weekends/holidays. When I asked around, there's alot of people not too happy with this. So far about 20 have said they will get passes for other resorts this year.

sweet. nice autumn colors in that last shot.

I also don't think statistical odds accumulate per se. Still, that leaves me with law of large numbers, which your second example alludes to. Since the principle is that the probability of any possible event occurring at least once in a series increases with the number of events in the series, we can rephrase the example as 1 person (me) going out into avie terrain 100 days a season. But, probably the observed frequency of an avie-accident will also vary on the type of risk as well (eg 25 degree slope vs 35 degree slope, timing of new snowfall, heavily forested area vs bowl terrain

pretty cool site, has basic daily weather data for Japan back to 2002: http://www.weathermap.co.jp/kishojin/diary/200203/index.php3

timely post keba. Lately I've been thinking about this more, as we are in the mountains alot and unfortunately there are alot of accidents out there: *do statistical odds accumulate? *if the law of large numbers dictates that probabilities will be borne out if an event occurs often enough, is there anything you can do to lessen exposure? *does individual choice mitigate the odds or frequency? *is risk random or not? *are random events governed by probability? *can you reduce exposure to random statistical averages, for example by good skills? probably someone with a stronge

I've been looking over some pix from last year recently, here are a few various avie photos for anyone interested in this kind of stuff. 2005.12.14 kagura, ridge near gangamine. during 12/10-12/13 it snowed continually 2006.01.13 triggered while hiking up to nakaone. snowed pretty hard 2 days before this. 2006.03.25 big slide at Tairappyo a few days before. last pic is from the traverse out towards Tsuchitaru 2006.04.22 Makihatayama. old debris on left, fresh sluffs on right from snow earlier same morning 2006.04.

nice photos, big big mountains. 10 meters/minute is a pretty good pace, especially hauling up a tent.

more than you ever wanted to know about artificial snow: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/8203snow.html I'll wait for the real stuff to fall, till then will probably go out for a few more hikes.

for anyone around Tokyo, there's an event held annually in Ikebukuro where you can pick up discount tickets, etc. usually long lines, but might be worth it to save a few bucks. http://www.sunshinecity.co.jp/winterresort/index.html unfortunately, no such tix for naeba/kagura this year. prince hotels is getting mighty stingy these days.

lastest issue of FallLine Magazine (2007) has an article of Daisuke Sasaki hiking up and riding down with a 4-man crew, some face called "Nishi-Kabe". Steep steep terrain, 14 hour round trip.

any hunters out there? --------------------------------- http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061024/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_life_japan_bears_1 As Japan's people grow older, bears grow bolder Tue Oct 24, 7:05 AM ET Scarce acorns, silent guns and rural depopulation are bringing Japan's bears out of the woods. The number of Japanese black bears caught feasting in fields of sweet corn, apples and other crops has jumped this year, with the animals increasingly undisturbed by hunters, whose ranks are dwindling as the population ages. "There are plenty of bears out there who'

thought it was 80/20, look like it's much more skewed than that. guess I'm in that second category, but slipping back to lurker status. it's nice to check out the forums time to time for gossip/stoke, but given the limited amount of time in day I'd rather be outside actually doing something, like hiking up a mountain, bike-riding, etc.

here's a bit more news on the hakuba-accident Mr Wiggles mentioned.. http://www.shinmai.co.jp/news/20061010/KT061009FTI090002000022.htm http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20061011-00000044-mailo-l20 http://dailynews.yahoo.co.jp/fc/domestic/mountain_accidents/

We hiked from Tsubakuro-Yarigatake this past Sat 8-Mon 10, yeah it was an interesting time to be in the mountains up there. This is near the peak of Tsubakuro on Sat. In some places the snow was around 30cm from wind-drift. day 2 early morning day 3 looking at Yarigatake from Tengu-Hara

not really related to tokyo shops (it's in chiba), but this place is running some pretty good deals on snowboard-related stuff. http://www.rakuten.co.jp/sports-ex/504360/ looks like a direct-importer, so I don't know what the warranty situation would be.

looks like le spud has been playing with Line Rider: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/40255643/

nunoba is the bottom part of yuzawa-kogen, pretty easy to walk to from onsen-dori.

nice one dizzy. Kumapix and Bushpig, seems like you two have some pretty good cameras. got any good pics??

places I've seen around yuzawa that seem to be more family-oriented are iwappara, nunoba, nakazato. nunoba is pretty close to osen-dori, you can probably play around on the lower slopes w/o needing a lift-ticket (eg bring a plastic sled, etc). for playing around on snowshoes, maybe the big central park near the river might be good. tashiro, I don't recall any kids area there. it can get mighty windy, cold and icy up there..

http://net.jmc.or.jp/saishiki/index.asp http://net.jmc.or.jp/saishiki/MF_SearchSampleDigitalMap_k.asp

you can see more pics of that line on Tonegawa's guide-site: 唐松不帰二峰 http://www.valley.ne.jp/~color/indexstaff.htm 1999 http://www.valley.ne.jp/~color/indexfukinihouhokuhou.htm 2003 http://www.valley.ne.jp/~color/indexfukinihoukyokushin.htm

Quote: Originally posted by Fattwins: are those all around kagura? various mountains in the Niigata area. Quote: Wow !!! (as usual). Montoya, how many pics do you reckon you took last season? I have a digital-camera. I took alot. *we need more pics from other people!

it's a rainy sunday, so here are a few more pics: me on nice drop-in hoping he doesn't run into me face shot (or did he crash?)