hokkaido Asahidake - April 13th

[disco2000 0]

Hi everyone. This is my first post on the forums, although I've been creeping for a while.

 

I got a couple free lift tickets to Tomamu a while back, and I was asked to write a trip report on it. However, on the weekend I visited Tomamu there was nothing but ice all over the mountain, and I ended up just riding the terrain park the whole time, which isn't a whole lot to write about. So I thought I'd write about my trip to Asahidake from this weekend instead.

 

I live in southwest Hokkaido, about an hour west of Sapporo. Spring has hit the region, with the giant walls of snow on the sides of roads almost gone, but the last week saw some low-ish temperatures and precipitation. While that still meant rain on most of the mountains around my area, the word was that the snow was faling in Asahidake, the highest peak in Hokkaido. So a few buddies and I decided to make the trek out and hit up the ropeway.

 

Driving up went from this

 

To this

 

Got there around 10, and the cable car was quite crowded.

 

Visibility was non-existent, but I was just glad the ropeway was running..

 

Pretty harsh conditions at the top, with some large windblown patches. The visibility was so bad that we couldn't see each other if we strayed more than 10 meters away from each other, which meant getting separatedly frequently. I skied right into a hole at one point, which I had to climb out of. Sketchy stuff.

 

People at the top

 

Once we dropped into the trees, however, we were treated with ankle deep powder and decent visiblity.

 

Definitely early-March like conditions, with large pillows with cushy powder landings and faceshots

 

 

 

We mostly rode the obvious path down skier's left of the ropeway. It was pretty tracked out by the afternoon. I did do a run down the right side, at the end of the day, which provided some steep and deep runs, albeit a bit short.

I could definitely see what people mean by Asahidake being "4-5 deepest turns of your life, and then riding the cat track for 10 minutes."

 

Still, the weather "cleared up" a fair bit near the end of the day on the bottom half of the mountain, and it was clear that there were endless lines to be had with some familiarity with the mountain and good visibility from the top.

 

 

 

All in all, an amazing day considering it's mid-April. Skiing out the cat tracks, I seriously felt like it was February again, with the trees overloaded with snow.

 

Driving back home through Higashikawa looked like this.

 

Definitely spring everywhere else in Hokkaido. I was glad I could have one last day of winter (read: powder) before I put away the skis for the season.

[SnowJapan 178]

Hello disco2000

 

Thanks for the report. I don't know why it was happening but photos you embedded were getting blocked.

 

Could you please upload them here anyway:

http://www.snowjapanforums.com/index.php/gallery

 

Thank you!

[disco2000 0]

Thanks for letting me know! I think I fixed it?

[griller 9]

cool disco2000

 

You can also embed them using the img tags if you didn't know

 

[disco2000 0]

OK I think that worked. Hopefully it doesn't disappear again..

[Tubby Beaver 209]

nice report Disco. The snow has mainly all gone from Sapporo as well. I'm definitely in spring mode now....well waiting for spring to actually be sprung....looking forward to next season and the pow it'll brig

[tim_d 0]

Only a very new poster as well disco2000 but the creeping took me to this TR of your!

 

Awsome stuff, good to see the pow pow is still a falling and the vis wasent to bad in the trees! Cant wait to get back there!

[seemore 66]

Cheers Disco

Looked like a good day up there

[disco2000 0]

Looks like I might be going up again this weekend

500km roundtrip but I can't say no to April powder!