Only Sam, Thomas and I opted to ski on the first day with fatigue, knees and sickness taking Emily, Caroline and Michael out of the action. The conditions were, like the first day in Shiga Kogen, challenging. It wasn’t the powder this time so much as visibility and wind. We persisted for a couple of hours before calling an early halt to go and seek lunch. We met up with Caroline and Emily (Michael still wasn’t feeling well and we know it wasn’t the vodka because he’s made a pitiful effort at emptying the bottle that we bought to drink). We strolled around Hakuba looking for somewhere to eat and came to the conclusion that most of the eateries must have been concentrated where most of the people were at lunch time: on the mountain. We did find a nice little local place though and had a relaxed lunch. Sam opted not to ski for the second half of the day so Thomas and I set off to explore the rest of the mountain so that we would have a better idea of what we’d like to ski the following day.
It was fun skiing the afternoon away with Thomas, though we were mostly focussed on finding the right place rather than spending a lot of time actually skiing just for the fun of it. Of course the best spot that we found was right across the other side of the ski area and required a number of lifts up and runs back down to navigate between there and where we had started from. Knowing this we left in what we considered good time to make it back again as lift closures were staggered and so we couldn’t be sure exactly when each one would stop operating.
We caught a long chair up that we thought would only require one more beyond it before a long ski down only to find that the second lift was closed. It was a little disheartening, but we knew that the worst result would be that we’d end up back at the bottom and have to go for a long walk back to our hotel or if it came to it, catch a cab (which was at least an option we’d have in Hakuba compared with Shiga Kogen). Fortunately we managed to weave our way back across the mountain and make it home before the closest lift to our hotel closed and could even have managed an extra run. We decided against it though. Our legs were pretty tired and conditions weren’t exactly begging us to keep going, so we called it quits. I mean, the conditions were such that this is the only photo that I bothered to take throughout the entire day:
We decided to try dinner at our hotel and were taken through to a very Japanese area for seating. Fortunately although seated close to the floor, there was a depression under the table so that we could sit rather than have to attempt to do it on the floor (which tends to be somewhat impossible for this inflexible old bastard). The menu was a mix of Japanese and Western food and a number of us opted for the hamburger for a break in cuisine. We’d found a convenience store open when we were wandering about looking for lunch and agreed that it would be a good place to pick up something for dessert. So after dinner we trudged off through the snow to pick up ice creams and a couple of drinks, which was when I discovered these beautiful things:
Needless to say we became instant friends and one of them opted to follow me back to the hotel room! The forecast was for better weather the next day so we went to bed hoping for a great day of skiing.
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