Caught the bus out to Sapporo Kokusai yesterday. It was clear and sunny as was the day before. I still managed to find some untracked riding in the center bowl and in the secret trees, but it was settled, old powder – fun, but not wonderful. The sunny-side faces were windpacked and had a melt-crust, but the sheltered sides were fine. I took a break and had a “pizza-nan” and coffee set (750 yen) at the little snack shop at the top of the gondola (they used to be down midway by the slow old pair lifts, but moved to a more accessible location). I had a little incident with the paper tube of sugar for my coffee. While shaking it gently from the end to clear some air space to tear it, the paper disintegrated – sending granulated sugar everywhere. Darned those foreigners! Don’t they know how to open a paper tube of sugar? Lucily nobody saw me do this, and I managed to clean it all up. Food was more snack-sized. Probably a bit pricy for what I got. (B) The clear sky had turned a little hazy by the time I got done with lunch. A hint of snow began to fall. On the bus ride home, the haze in the sky was becoming more pronounced – snow was on the way. Dinner was sausage, kraut, some kind of gratin thing, and sauerbraten at a German restaurant. Had a good hefe-weisen too… can’t recall the name right now… Georg Someone & Sohn… All the food was really good (A, except the sauerbraten which was an A-). Around 7000 yen for everything including beer, dessert and coffee.
This morning, there was new snow on the veranda railing. Sore legs or not, I was going to hit Kokusai. There was a good 5cm of unsettled new snow in the street, and a continuing flurry ongoing. Jamming into the morning rush-hour subway with my snowboard bag and B/C pack, I headed off to the bus stop. It’s a little funny how you can just smash in against a bunch of salarymen to get just inside the door in these situations here and nobody even bats an eyelash. As I was getting in this morning, some tiny little old grandma just ninja-ed in front of me and stole my spot! WTF! I had to give some suit the shoulder and another one a backpack to the face to get inside in time! It was snowing lightly at the bus stop, but heading out of town, the snowfall went from a light flurry to a good dump. The round-trip bus ride and a one-day lift ticket was 4600 yen.
At Kokusai, there was about 15-20cm of unsettled snow at the base. When I dropped my board in the snow to get my lift ticket, it disappeared into the new snow! The top was deeper. I dropped into the same secret trees as yesterday, but immediately came upon a person-high windlip right under the gondola. Needless to say it was impassible. It got this nice person-shaped imprint on it as I went full-bore down into it. I was making a 20-30cm deep track as I dropped through the trees, but there was still way more new snow below that. It was soft and silent – like flying in ground-effect. popping out onto the groomer, there was still at least 5cm of new snow over the early morning corduroy. I hit the left side of the downhill course where there was 50-70cm of unsettled accumulation in spots. I was pointing it straight downhill on a 45-degree slope and putting about 90% of my weight on my back leg and leaning back past the tail. The ride was as amazing as the intense back-leg burn. I rode off-piste until noon, took a break for another Nan-pizza, rode some more, got a 680 yen kakiage-tempura soba, then rode until my leg gave out.
The sky in town was back to clear by sunset, so the should be no new snow tomorrow. That’s a little of a bummer since I’m off to Niseko tomorrow. Supposedly there will be snow all weekend though. Dinner today was kaiten sushi in Susukino (A-) for around 3500 yen, and dessert and coffee at the fruit-cake shop (B). No, not fruitcake – like cake, but with fruit on top. That was around 1500 yen for two cakes and two coffees.
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