Zao - What am I missing out on?

[warhawk 0]

A couple of months ago a group of friends and I decided we would head to Zao in January for the long weekend, but due to a minor knee twister caused by an embarrassing stack over New Year's I decided to pull out to let myself recover. Really annoyed with myself for crashing, I've been fretting that I'll be missing out on something spectacular.

 

Now, cos I'm not really a big-mountain pow rider (yet) and would primarily be sticking to the gelendes, what I want to know is, should I be slapping myself hard for missing out?

 

Given that its a long weekend it will probably be packed anyways. At least thats what I keep telling myself

[samurai 0]

It will be busy. Since you don't know the place, you're missing out on flat walks in (likely) heavy fog and/or blizzard conditions trying to get to someplace you think you should be while looking at a map that doesn't define all the varying terrain or explain the network of lifts required to transfer from one side of the mountain to the other.

 

It's not user-friendly for the tourist with a snowboard.

 

Your friends will come back talking about how annoying their first day was. Let them go, learn the place, then come later.

 

(the front side is the place to be for gelendes, though. Tell them to hang on the quads and sky cable on the left side of the map.)

 

Kurohime and Omori lifts on the right side of the map are highly overrated and offer very narrow courses.

[warhawk 0]

Thanks for the headsup samurai! I'm not sure but my friends may have been up there before.. They are Nagano locals that like to travel round when they can.

I'll look forward to their report when they come back! I'll try to get them to take some pics of throngs of people that are sure to be there!

[BagOfCrisps 24]

I want to go to Zao. Maybe next year.