Kingofmyrrh
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Posts posted by Kingofmyrrh
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Yes I can do a weekday if it's a public holiday. But would prefer not to do the 29th. Since there would be quite a lot people going in GW, it might be best if we go ridiculously early in the morning. It will be a good chance for you to get used to skinning with the splitboard too (as well as this weekend of course). If the snow is as nice as it was for me then we might even be able to do the mid-section a couple of times depending on time and energy. Anyway we can think about the details later.
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Actually I really enjoyed doing it all on my own. I normally go out with a great bunch and definitely want to spend most of my time going out with them, but doing it solo has its own, different appeal. I didn't really feel discouraged as such, but I had to admit I was struggling. The mountains and weather do seema bit bigger and more intimidating, but perhaps that's not a bad thing. However, you can't take any action photos and the in-car banter is pretty light, so going with Tsonda next time is probably the right choice!
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I don't think it's that much of a mission unless you end up doing the extended version... doh. The distance and elevation I climbed was much more than I would have had to do to make it to the top had I checked whether the road was open yet!
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Bigger cup size than Hakuba!
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Excellent, then we would have a choice of whatever we liked.
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It's not open. And the skyline is the wiggly road you can see on the map that leads to the start point of my planned route on the south side.
Edit to be clearer: the Skyline wasn't open, the toll road on the North side was open but I thought by the time I drove all the way around it might be too late. On reflection migh not have been the case, but can't change the past!
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I would do it again anytime if the access roads are open. I don't really feel like hiking over the sand dunes for longer than is necessary, the route that I tried is very possible but we would need to start earlier in the morning than I did. I skied pretty much back down the ascent line. The route that I planned would probably be almost too easy in comparison to the route I tried, but you would get almost as much skiing so from that point of view it would be fine.
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No decent pictures today I'm afraid, was too busy thrashing myself to think about snaps for most of the day.
So I left Tokyo at about 4am and with clear roads was near the foot of Fuji just before 6am. I headed for the Fujimiya entrance, which offers the highest elevation start point of any of the regular ascents, but met with disaster - there was a huge concrete block in the middle of the turning that led to the car park, and no chance of squeezing even the smallest car past it. The sign at the turning helpfully informed me that I would be facing a 13km walk with skis and boots on my back just to get to the point I had planned on starting. Giving up on that, I headed towards the Gotenba entrance. Having come past it on the way, I knew it would be blocked also, but I suspected the snow might be a little closer this way.
For comparison, check out these two pictures showing the planned ascent route (top) and the revised ascent route (below). As you can see, the change in route would mean walking about 3 times as far with more than a vertical kilometre of extra climb thrown in for good measure. Had I know this I would probably have retired to an onsen to weep, but fortunately I hadn't done my research properly.
Having come all the way I decided that I might as well head upwards and see what would happen. Trudging along the access road you can see on the map, I spied a path winding up throught the forest (at this point I couldn't even see the mountain, let alone any snow) which seemed to be heading in the right direction. Needless to say the path soon dwindled away, leaving me battling through trees determined to take possession of my skis and boots. Just as I was ready to call off the whole thing as a stupid mistake I stumbled across a larger path which led me to the start of the pumice desert between me and the snow.
Being a Fuji virgin, I didn't know that the whole thing is coated with a layer of loose pebbles, making climbing it rather like trying to scale an enormous sand dune. Still, the work was not too taxing if rather boring. There were huge wayposts driven into the ground every 100m or so which meant that routefinding was never an issue (although with a symmetrical cone like Fuji I don't see how it ever could be really). I had started a little ahead of a snowboarding couple but the grind seemed to get to them and they soon fell behind. Soon after I lost sight of them and didn't see them again. I presume they must have headed home, discouraged by a landscape that resembled Mt. Doom in Mordor. They look quite close in this photo, but it was taken with 6x zoom.
Mainly because I was lazy and couldn't be bothered to change into boots and skis, I continued to hike parallel to the ribbon of snow that reached out towards the base until I ran out of rock. A slightly strange decision considering I could have swapped skis, bindings and skis boots on my back for a pair of light trainers half an hour earlier than I did. Before changing over, I took a few snaps of the odd cloud lighting towards the horizon. Although it was approaching 9am by now, the light was still dim.
Not so much to say about the skin up. Long, straight and featureless. As I gained altitude it began to get cooler but the wind was more of a concern. It started to really pick up and blast me with ice shards, forcing me to swap shades for goggles. Looking left and right, the view was the same for 90% of the climb:
To cut a long story short, I kept pushing up for the next few hours. The only other group I could see were three well-kitted climbers up ahead, who I gained on slowly. As I would later discover, they were regular Fuji climbers. The gradient began to get steeper but I wasn't so bothered by that. However the air was beginning to thin out and even stopping for a couple of minutes I couldn't seem to quite get my breath back. Doing quite a lot of sport, this wasn't really a sensation I was used to - I get winded but generally recover if given a minute, but this wasn't really happening. I managed to keep putting one foot ahead of the other as time zoomed by, but it became clear that I was really beginning to struggle.
As the weather continued to get worse, I caught up with the ice climbers taking a rest in the wind shadow of a hut buried in snow. Asking them how much further to the top, I was disheartened to hear that it was another 500m vertical. It was already 12:30pm, over 6 hours since leaving the car. I had also set myself a turnback time of 1:30pm, and I knew that I wouldn't make the summit in just an hour at the pace I was moving at. The final nail in the coffin was hearing that the climbers themselves would not be going further. I was happy to believe that their decision was the right one and decided to end my ascent as well. It was clear that nobody using this route had been to the top yet and there was nobody behind us, and I didn't fancy the idea of being up there all alone so late in the day.
I hadn't expected much of the ski, but was pleasantly surprised to find perfect corn snow only 100m or so down from where I clicked in. Remembering a couple of hints from SC and FT over the season, I decided just to cruise down in big relaxed arcs across the truly vast bowl below me and enjoy the turns. It was fantastic to see the car park below me, previously taunting me with how little I'd climbed, but now hope as a rectangle, drawing nearer at speed. Although the skiing was smooth cruising all the way, my legs were so beat that I took a mini-fall almost every time I tried to skid to a stop for a break - my thighs just weren't up to fighting the hill. You can kind of see some tracks and evidence of my "rolling stop" in this photo.
Getting into a smooth rhythm, even the grippy gloop at the very bottom wasn't a problem as I slid all the way down to the very tip of the snow cover. I knew I had a 2 hour hike ahead of me to get back to the car, with my body already pretty shredded, but after pushing through the pain at the top I knew it wouldn't be a problem, and it wasn't. Unfinished business with the mountain remains though...
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Wow you guys really know how to use a camera...
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He had to work
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I guess it means we are going to have to organise a trip to Gulmarg in order to bring the skis back a little closer to their spiritual home
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we're going to be fighting over which skis belong to who next year. We will have to get soem stickers. Unfortunately I don't think it is possible to conceive of a more pleasing sticker than the one stunts has on his brockers, always a sucker for the voluptuous brunette...
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I'm bored but not quite that bored.
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Summer has already come to the SJ forums.
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I'll have Brockers please! In blue if possible.
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What happened with this? Are we going to do an order? Do we know about the topsheets, not that it's a deal breaker for me?
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I found the answer - it's by a guy called Addict over on TGR. Visit his homepage and he has a bunch you can watch.
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Goodbye to Charlie for now I guess. It was great skiing with you if you happen to read this!
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Not tax relief. Deductible from income.
Pictures of girl please...
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Sounds like I missed out... in the end I didn't make it to the concert either, I had to go to work drinks. Normally I'm pretty adept at skipping out on these things but it was for colleagues who are moving to HK and I couldn't just tell 'em to get bent. Ah well. How's Yamashiro san's knee coming on?
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Originally Posted By: thursday.Progress, Richard bought at a very reasonable price so they say. Infact he's still grinning. But maybe that's 'cos he has a new piece of fluff.
Is the new fluff worth looking at? We need to get this thread onto a more interesting direction. -
Jesus that's huge...
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Originally Posted By: tripitakaSNP, I asked a friend who owns an apartment building in Japan for investment purposes, and he doesn't know anything about being able to claim depreciation as a cost for tax rebates. Also, you cannot do it in NZ for property investment, but you might be able to do so if you are running a business of which the building/property is not the core business, i.e., a restuaurant.
You should probably take into consideration the fact that in Japan being able to depreciate structures like this is not a glitch - it reflects the fact that they really do lose value and after reaching a certain age can actually be considered as negative as it is accepted that anyone who buys the land/structure package will have to pay to rip it down. In most oher countries I know of buildings just don't lose their value like this so it makes sense that similar rules may not apply.
TR: Fuji Failure 4-20-08
in Snow talk, trip reports, Japan avalanche & backcountry
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More volume = bigger cup size. Doesn't mean it's better skiing!
But yes, I want to go to those places for sure. Ideally after replacing the dukes with tourers on my gotamas though.