After a cold start to the morning, it has been a fairly mild day here in Hakuba.

Tomorrow morning is a national holiday here in Japan and so it's the first day of a three day holiday. While we haven't had much 'snow event' to report, there are a few things going on from tomorrow.

Hakuba Goryu will continue to be open again and Hakuba 47 is opening up the upper part of R8 as they did last weekend. So it will be business as per last weekend over there.

At Happo-one, they plan to have the following lifts moving: Gondola, Usagidaira pair, Kurobishi No2 quad, Kokusai No3 pair and the Panorama pair lifts... with the Gondola starting to make it's way up the mountain from 8am. The courses planned to be open are Usagidaira, Kurobishi and Panorama. So that's perhaps more than we might have been expecting but good to be able to report anyway.

Snow is of course still fairly thin on the ground so need to keep that in mind, but having said that it is pretty good cover up there. We can't complain. Or perhaps I should say we shouldn't!

How about the forecast? Well, you might get rained on in the village tomorrow. There is a chance of snow falling up on the open slopes, so high up is obviously the place to be!

After that clearer conditions seem likely over the weekend, especially on Sunday. Looks like Saturday night is going to be a particularly cold one.