Snowboarding

Alex was very sad as our bus arrived in Hakuba as there was no snow on the ground in the resort, and the bright sunshine on the mountains only really picked out all of the ice.  This year has not been a good one for snow in the Japan Alps.  Hakuba normally sees around 10m of snow, this year they have only had 2 so far.

So we shortened our 1 week stay to just 3 days, we might come back later if the snows fall in the next couple of weeks.

snowboard sledging

Sarah had bboked us into the Alupu Guesthouse a long time ago (before she rubbished her foot up and she and Andy decided not to come) it is in a great location right next to the main gondola, and we got a bit of a bargain room, with the main bedroom and an extra tatami dining room.  However, we did not pay for ensuite, which meant that we were told not to use the bathroom.  So we sort of didn't.  The guesthouse also has a hot tub on the roof, which we booked one night for a nice warm soak in the falling snow.

That's right, we had a couple of snowfalls in Hakuba, the first was onlyabout 6 inches, overnight before our first day, which made conditions pretty good for the first morning as Alex and I tried to teach Carolyne a thing or two about snowboarding, she did pretty well in the first two hours, starting to put some good turns together.  Until we took her down a bit of a tricky piste and knocked (literally) all the confidence out of her.

2nd day conditions were not to good in the morning, but the afternoon bought some heavy snow, and by about 3pm, the conditions were beautiful, except the lack of visibility.  Alex and I went up and down the mountain a couple of times, cruising through about 30cms of really fluffy snow.

Caz had had a private lessons with some geezer from a rental shop in town, and was getting pretty good, by the afternoon of the 3rd day we all joined up and had a good afternoon, in spite of the thick layer of cloud that stopped us going up much more than the lowest lifts.  Did quite a lot of snowboard sledging too, which is always fun.

The forecast for the 4th day was rain... So we decided to hand our boards back and start our driving tour of the area.  First stop (after some nonsense trying to get a car in Nagano) was Matsumoto