Japan, Honshu - a trip report from mid-Feb

A snowHead

With a one year delay (due to moving house), kolkie and I went on a trip to Japan this Feb, for my 50th anniversary.

TLDR: three destinations, snow very good to excellent in the first four days (despite a low snow year for Japan), more tricky afterward - but we had a great time.

Now for a bit more info:

We first stayed four days in a traditional hotel in Akakura Onsen, in the Myoko Kogen area. This area turned out to be the highlight of our trip as we had the best snow, excellent food, made friends with our guides etc.

The last time kolkie was on snow, on 5 January, she was stretchered off after a knee injury (which fortunately turned out to be just a meniscus issue). She started very apprehensively but we still headed for some trees - here's literally one of her first turns:

Here's the most impressive ski-in ski-out hotel I've ever seen, in Akakura Kanko:

On the second day we hiked up from Suginohara and the snow was even better:

...more coming up soon

A snowHead

Good pix.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

What I didn't get to mention was that not too far from the end of the run, but still in the forest, kolkie fell, heard a pop and thought she did her ACL. But she had no pain, so, after about 10 minutes, we decided to try to ski out very slowly - basically long traverses, stopping and then turning with small steps. That took us more than an hour and a half for what we could have skied in 10-15 minutes, and we emerged on the piste just as it was getting dark:

So she skipped the next day (spoiler: she visited a physiotherapist who checked her knee and said that it was fine - he thought the tendons had made the noise).

She did miss some great powder though. Here's Ricky, our guide:

and this is me further down:

Actually Ricky filmed me on the top run, it's not pro quality footage but I like it:
https://youtube.com/shorts/1xm-i_LIJF0

Oh how could I forget? On the previous day, we spotted a rabbit in the forest:

(credit to Ricky for noticing it)

...and then I tried to get creative with photographing the trees (all this before kolkie's fall

You need to Login to know who's really who.

The sun came up on the next day and we hiked again from the top lift at Suginohara.

But first, here's the HQ of our guides, Dancing Snow - highly recommended:

As we put our skins on, I wander a few metres to get a shot of the old lift:

Then going up we got some wonderful light and views:

(same trees as just above - the light was changing fast)

Busy day going up

Here's a view of Mt Myoko at the top: a volcano in a crater of another volcano:

kolkie wasn't feeling up to doing a run on the north side, which would have required some additional touring, so we skied back on the south side. The best day and time for it, but I was a tiny bit frustrated, knowing what we missed (I got over it though)

Couple of pics taken by Ricky on the way down - he knocked a dial on my camera and badly overexposed them, but I was able to get something back:

more to come tomorrow