I was debating whether to go out today or not. On the way back home from dinner at Ubusuna Okinawa Ryouri, it was raining in town, so my guess was that if the same weather system was over the entire adjacent area, there would be snow falling at Kokusai. The morning webcam check was inconclusive, and in fact showed wet roads indicating rain out at Nakayama Touge, so I was not excited. Waffling over breakfast, I decided to go for it, and it ended up being a good call. Heading out on the expressway, the mountians above Teine were clouded in. Onze was scraped away to dirt, and Asarigawa was pretty much melted away at the bottom. Heading up the valley past the dam, there was fresh snowfall just past the first snow shed where the freezing level started. Kokusai was pretty much abandoned – heck, until the second stop, I had the bus completely to myself, aside from the driver and ticket girl! I geared up and headed out just as the ground opened. It was just under zero C at the bottom which was a good sign.
The top was clouded in and a light flurry fell constantly nearly all day. It was a little hard to see at first, but after a while I got used to riding by Braille. There was a light new covering of about 5cm over the hardened krunk from the day before. It was good I didn’t bother going out yesterday. I could still see some of my lines from Tuesday. As opposed to Tuesday when it got so warm I pulled the liners out of my AK gloves and only pimped the shells, at around noon, my hands actually got cold! For a point, I had the jacket and pants vents all zipped up. Oh, and point to note, chest rig straps block the pit zips on a jacket moreso than backpack straps.
I took a break down at the daylodge. The ride down to the bottom was harrowing to say the least and quite uncomfortable. I was in total dirtbag mode, so instead of 780-yen ramen, I had two nigiri that I picked up in the morning from 7-11. I bought a hot cocoa from the store in the lodge, so my lunch ended up easily under 500-yen. The nori on the nigiri got a little broken up knocking around in the chest rig pocket though, so next time no triangle ones. After a little siesta, I went back up the mountain and sessioned a little kicker off on the right that I saw before lunch. Again, like the “lion’s back” on Blackcomb that Fabio and I were hitting like there was no tomorrow, until I rode the kicker, nobody was riding it.
As 14:00 rolled around, I headed back down to the bottom, this time by the easy run. Since there was a long flat leading up to it, most people weren’t going down that way, so it was still untracked corduroy most of the way down, until, of course, it became horrid choppy wumps and slumps. It seemed like they groomed it down to a point then turned the cat around and went back up. After negotiating the hellish corrugations to the center run where the dirt and plants were beginning to show through the scrape, I went inside and packed it up. I was craving some salt, so I destroyed a bag of habanero chips then boarded the 15:00 bus back to town. Even if it was only 16-something whne I stepped out of the bus terminal, it was dark. Now I’m kicking back with a Duvel and thinking about what to have for dinner. It’s supposed to rain again tommorow in town, so it should be a decent day on the mountain. We’ll see…
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