We’d just experienced a strangely warm few days. It was February, mid-season in Hokkaido. This had caused considerable crust anywhere below 1300m or so. Takenoko-yama and the peaks surrounding Sapporo Kokusai ski resort were no exception.
However, we took a gamble on this weekend. A bunch of new snow had fallen, and we were hearing good things from the hills just west of Sapporo City.
The drive out to the mountain didn’t fill us with confidence though. Even in Jozankei, just 10km south of Sapporo Kokusai, there was at best only about 5m of new snow on the ground.
This all changed, however, within about 1km of the trailhead for Takenoko-yama. All of a sudden, we were driving through deep snow. Our friends who rave about Sapporo Kokusai ski area always go on about how much of a micro-climate it is there. And today we saw first-hand evidence of it.
Despite it being a weekend, the car park was not overly full. We got our gear together and hurried to get out into the forest.
As expected, there was already a well-set skintrack through the woods, heading up to the main face of Takenoko-yama. We availed ourselves of the free ride through the deep new snow through the lower woods. Here, the woods were tight and we were surrounded by new growth forest.
It didn’t take long for the newer-growth forest to give way to the main open face of Takenoko-yama. Large old trees dotted the face. It was snowing relatively hard, but visibility was OK.
We carried on up, now making long zig-zags up the steepening face.
By the time we got to around 800m in altitude, it was clear that going any higher wasn’t going to get us any better skiing. The new snow was clearly accumulating lower down, with higher reaches still crusty and wind-swept.
We climbed as high as it felt logical, ripped skins, and did our first lap.
We could feel the crust layer under the new snow higher up in the piece, but the last 150m or so of descent was sublime. It was clear we’d need to be doing a few more laps to get our value-for-time today.
In the end, we did three short laps before calling it a day.
We blasted back to the trailhead on the mellow slope through the trees and then headed to the onsen for a hotspring soak.
