Marc's Public Blog - Skiing / Snowboarding / Snow


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This is a collection of my blog entries about snowboarding.
You can find all the pictures I've taken here, and read below for the more recent trips that I have recorded in blog entries:

Table of Content for snow:

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2017/01/29 Nagano's Hakuba
π 2017-01-29 01:01 in Nsnow, Snow

As our first snow destination in Nagano, we went to Hakuba. They had the olympics, so like squaw, it must be great :)
Hakuba has multiple snow resorts, Happo One being the most central and famous since it had the olympic facilities. The first day however, we went to visit Hakuba 47, another big resort a short distance away, joined to Goryu, but sadly they were very strict, would stop the lift if I even dared to try to get off the lift bound in with both feet (which I do for safety and the welfare of my knee which can't take torquing from riding on one leg), and then they had this tree zone, the only place off boring groomers, where you had to be a member to ride. I figured that since all I do is ride trees and off piste, that would make me an honorary member, but turns out ski patrol disagreed, go figure...




Goryu was adjacent to Hakuba 47
Goryu was adjacent to Hakuba 47


Japan likes gondolas, way too many for my taste
Japan likes gondolas, way too many for my taste

tree riding zone, that's for me, right?
tree riding zone, that's for me, right?

The next day the plan was go to to Cortina, another further north resort known for actually allowing riding off piste, but sadly the rain falling was actually rain at lower elevation, the conditions at cortina were supposed to be horrible, so instead we stayed in our room a bit longer until the temps got lower, and we went to Happo One for a half day of skiing at the top elevations where the snow wasn't too bad, even if the visiblity was near 0. Not too many pictures as a result:





The 3rd day, we got luckier, and all the snow that fell overnight was actually snow and Happo One's top was excellent powdery conditions. We went all over the top of the mountain and enjoyed the fresh powder very much. As a result, we never got ot see Cortina, but since it was a warm storm, staying at Happo One was the right decision for snow quality. We then had to leave the resort not too late to catch a bus to Nagano and take a train to Shiga Kogen





avalanche gates
avalanche gates

at the time, it seemed like a great idea to go between them and enjoy the fresh snow, Arturo told me otherwise :)
at the time, it seemed like a great idea to go between them and enjoy the fresh snow, Arturo told me otherwise :)




See more images for Nagano's Hakuba
2017/01/05 2 days at Heavenly with Louis and Ovidiu
π 2017-01-05 01:01 in Nsnow, Snow
Louis was nice enough to accept a trip to Tahoe and do all the driving a mere 8 hours after landing in SFO and getting home from our Paris trip. I didn't get to sleep a lot, but thankfully Louis was more awake than I was. We were on the road by 04:50. Now, our plan was to go to Kirkwood and see what happens, but sadly Caltrans never opened SR88, so we couldn't get to Kirkwood directly and had to change plans and drive to South Lake Tahoe. At that point, I made the mistake of saying "Eh, well, we're here, let's just go to Heavenly, it's low winds today, it should just open without problems".
Big mistake, I didn't actually know how much Heavenly sucked nowadays. For various reasons they got very little open (Sky never opened and Canyon opened past 11:00 and had 20-30mn lines on a thursday!). I ended up mostly running Canyon despite the lines, thinking about how much better it would be if Heavenly wasn't so lazy and actually opened sky.



4 lifties to get sky ready, and then not open it. Good job!
4 lifties to get sky ready, and then not open it. Good job!


canyon was good for the first ride and then went downhill fast :(
canyon was good for the first ride and then went downhill fast :(

yeah :(
yeah :(

some people were fed up and hiked up towards sky express
some people were fed up and hiked up towards sky express






After the disappointment of day #1, not due to lack of snow, but mostly due to Heavenly suckage, we went back with Ovidiu (who nicely hosted us the previous night), and finally they did bother to open sky express. As expected the conditions were great:









Ovidiu then took us to fire break, an gate to exit the ski resort and ride down all the way to the bottom of the gondola. That was prety sweet:




untracked
untracked



don't miss the bridge
don't miss the bridge

After taking the gondola back up, we did a last run in the rock field off tamarack (but the entrance we took was not good), and then called it a day:




Thanks a lot to Ovidiu for hosting us, guiding us around heavenly, and Louis for driving us.


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