When I arrived there was no snow in the lowlands and barely anything in the mountains. Being there for skiing we were hooked on weather forecasts but day after day it was too warm and was falling as rain in the high country and the resorts opened one run at a time over the next few weeks. Both Leigh and I had bought passes to Shiga Kogen and were excited to explore somewhere different. With 18 different small resorts on one pass we were going to ride at an area twice the size of Vail.
Though it was great snow quality we were quite limited and the snowpack was pretty dire needing a few feet to bury the sasa grass (aka bamboo). Day after day we would watch the forecast seeing no foretasted snow and trying to make the best our of what we had.
The snowpack was getting deeper with a few cms every other day so we spent most of our time touring and making the most out of wind transported snow and areas that had no signs of traffic.
This went on for around a over a month as we kept exploring further and further away from the resorts. After a while of checking out topo maps for different places to tour we stumbled across what looked to be a volcanic lake which was a few kms from the ski resort so once the weather cleared we decided to go in for a closer look.Soon enough we crested onto the crater to find a beautiful acidic lake, by far one oy the most beautiful I have ever seen and we had it all to ourselves.
After exploring the crater a bit both Jenni and Adam West left and cm by cm the snowpack slowly grew at a painful rate but at least we had a cool spot for people to come do so when new people arrived it was a go to tour.By now it had been well over a month and we were riding almost exclusively on split boards as there was nothing to be had at the ski resorts. There were still lines to be had between the sasa grass and we made the most of it riding the only zones around that actually had a deep enough snowpack.This was our go to zone for well over a month as it was the highest elevation around and anything below it was jungle so day after day we hamstered these lines.When we would occasionally get snow we were stuck to the piste getting the occasion powder day here and there
By late January I was admist one of the worst snow seasons in Japan and getting desperate for new snow and making the most out of what little places around had a snowpack.Finally by the end of January we got a real storm dropping almost a meter overnight and got to explore the resort we had bought our passes from finding almost waste deep, dry snow along the way.I had been there for over a month by now and it was my first real powder day in Japan and it was amazing but not enough to bury most of the grass
I still had almost 2 more months so I was hoping that we would have many more days like this in the future.