Well things warmed up on Tuesday and this saw icey conditions up top, with wet conditions down low on both Tuesday and Wednesday. This didn’t make for the most pleasant skiing and after hitting the park on Tuesday, I decided to have yesterday off.

Today it felt noticeably cooler than the past couple of days and the small amount of snow that fell last night was much fluffier than the previous couple of days. The snowfall of the morning turned to sunshine during the day, with little wind to be found at Iwatake, where I decided to ride today.

With the sun showing itself during the day it did warm up on the slopes and I estimate it would have been about 2C at the bottom of Iwatake. There was a noticeable change in snow quality from about halfway down the mountain, therefore we spent most of our day up the top half.

With the snowfalls last night there were a few fresh lines to be had, and with not many crowds about it was till possible to get fresh lines up until about lunchtime. It wasn’t bottomless powder, but the fresh snow still made for fun riding.

The forecast for the next few days hopefully looks like snow, with the heaviest around Friday night. Fingers crossed for a few powder days to take us into the weekend and next week.

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Snow had the feeling 10-15cm of fresh today with an overcast sky. Temp of 10℃ at the top of the lifts meant the snow has been kept in good nick and there are still plenty of powder pockets to be found.

Current snow depths in Hakuba (thanks to Snow Navi).

Happo-one 190cm
Tsugaike 250cm
Goryu 325cm
Hakuba 47 244cm
Iwatake 170cm
Norikura 180cm
Cortina 345cm
Kashimayari 190cm

Be careful in current conditions. There was a HUGE avalanche out in the back bowls near Happo yesterday

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Apologies for no report yesterday, I had a big day on the slopes followed by farewell sake for the rest of my travelling group!

In short, yesterday was a lot of fun. I probably had about 3-5cm on my car in the valley, yet there was a good 10cm at the base of Hakuba 47 and about 20cm or so from the top of the gondola and higher (these are just observed measurements, not official and I wasn’t using a ruler). With very few people on the runs, this meant powder turns for a lot of the day. The new snow had mostly covered the ice, however lower areas of Goryu and through some of the steeper trees I still managed to scrape the ice base.

I have included a few pictures from the day. The picture with my glove and snow on the roof of my car shows how much fell at the base of Hakuba 47 between 8am and 3pm.

Today I awoke to more snow with about 3-4cm on my car. Didn’t get on to the slopes today, but I am assuming that conditions would have been similar to yesterday with the ice layer covered even more.

Forecast looks for snow to be tapering off over the weekend with the potential for rain on Monday (fingers crossed that doesn’t happen). At this stage the next storm cycle looks to begin around Tuesday/Wednesday next week.

Enjoy!

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Quick update this morning.

It started snowing before midnight here in Hakuba Valley, however this morning there is only about 1cm of fresh on top of the ice. Currently snowing lightly here, however unless the resorts have had more snow, I feel it may be dust on crust today.

Cortina is reporting 15cm at the base and 20cm up higher, however some runs are closed due to ice.

I will get out and takes some pics during the day. Enjoy whatever you choose to do and hope for plenty more snow over today and tonight.

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Unfortunately the rain that was predicted for Hakuba has started to fall and it has made things pretty wet out there. Fortunately though the rain is not too heavy and the temperature in the valley is only 0.9C which means it could possibly be falling as snow at higher elevations and there will be minimal damage to the base at lower elevations. On an even brighter note the forecast for the coming week looks like a lot of snow, so hopefully we should be back to fresh lines on Wednesday.

(Depths as reported on www.snownavi.com)

Happo-one 210cm
Tsugaike 280cm
Goryu 310cm
Hakuba 47 258cm
Iwatake 190cm
Norikura 210cm
Cortina 350cm
Kashimayari 200cm

No pictures from today, but with the wet weather it wasn’t looking too nice anyway. However here are a few from yesterday.

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Quick update tonight, however we had a powder day this morning!

Woke up this morning to another few centimetres in the valley, with about 10-15cm at Hakuba 47/Goryu. Light snow was falling this morning, however the forecast was for a mostly bluebird day. We had first lines down at 47 which was a fun 15cm on top of a freshly groomed base – epic! The sun then poked its head out for the rest of the day which warmed up the south facing slopes, however there were still fun lines to be found in the trees.

I’ll upload some pictures with tomorrow’s update.

Unfortunately the forecast is calling for rain tomorrow in to Tuesday, but after that another snow storm looks to roll in. Bring on the pow days later in the week

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