30 March 09

I have had endless mishaps with my camera: forgotten, lost, broken. And when I have had it, my luck at getting good footage has eluded me. In short, I have no visual content to offer from the last 10 days. And that is a shame as the last week has been fantastic.

Some hightlights:

Mio and I are searching for mountain roads clear of snow to use as a campsite and departure point for some real backcountry. We scored a 20km round trip to an area I have nicknamed Magic Mountain Magic Forest. Best trees and touring terrain I have found near Hakuba. We had a long day together and a good time camping in our little van with beers at the trail head when we returned.

As this latest storm approached I was out exploring a few 'hidden' bowls near Tsugaike. I have been up there a lot lately, enjoying time on my own (I'd forgotten how much I like being alone). Using skis these days allows me to link different terrain in interesting sequences. Much more efficient than with a snowboard. Just as much fun.

I managed one lucky day with Matt Lucas from deep north BC in Canada. He is a former Kita Alps backcountry skier and quite the genuine article when it comes to experienced backcountry travel. The snow was ok, but stability was poor. We saw some nice avalanche activity over the day. Not safe for steep or long lines.

Then the storm to end the snowy season arrived. At 2200m about 100cm of very good snow fell over two days, proper powder and no wind at all allowing a nice stable new snowpack to develop above the old re-frozen dirty corn that has been repeatedly sun baked and rained upon. It was winter again. I notched up 5 days running for amazing powder. Some days alone I managed 2000m vertical of skiing by quickly pushing out shorter laps. Low altitude snow was average. Treeline was epic... so no need to go higher and no desire to go too low. So I concentrated my efforts in 200-300m sections of terrain between 1800m and 2100m. It paid huge dividends and for two days I skied perfect powder, thigh deep, all alone, not crossing another ski track once. It was incredible.

As the storm cleared the wind continued to be calm with the clear weather opening the alpine terrain. Perfect conditions with the best snow and most stable of all season. Some guys have been out sending big stuff, other getting photo shoots done. Hakuba's freeriding came alive and the community was onto it. I felt sorry for those in resorts who simply miss out. Wanting to rest my legs and spend time with my buddy, I spent two fantastic days with my friend Mick skiing some great variations of the terrain in the Happo backbowls/sidecountry. No wind, clear skies, and snow that remained great day after day. The popular routes were getting tracked out, but we still found incredible snow on very real terrain with few or no tracks, spending a lot of time with few people near us. The last run today was almost perfect, despite the fact that had we not paid attention we might well have skied the line to an abrupt cliffed-out ending. By traversing over a little we entered a classic chute that we had no intention of riding but allowed us to link some totally untracked steep terrain. Thanks to the stable snow and perfect weather . It isn't like this very often. The mountains and weather have blessed us.