Weather this morning is on and off breaks in the cloud, more than 75% sky cover and extremely light snow at a rising barometer. The last 24hours produced about 18cm new snow at 860m. Still no appreciably strong winds below 1500m. I cant comment on higher winds.

Yesterdays snow profile near the top of Hakuba 47 revealed another 35cm of good soft snow, putting the crust layers down at around 60-70cm and producing similar stability test results as the previous day's profile. Snow depth at 1550m is 165cm, although I suspect some of that is empty space produced by vegetation squashed by snow. Foot penetration is now about 50cm (same site as previous day profile) plenty of great riding and plenty more snow for wind transport. Luckily winds have remained mostly at or below 30kph. Cloudy weather and light snow is forecast for the entire week, which is a frustration for my recon trips, but considering that my walk-train-bus trip from Goryu to Tsugaike takes over 1 hour to cover 13km, I don’t mind staying at my end of the valley so much. Hakuba is not a good place for the car-less. Unfortunately bad weather low altitude touring near my house is still not good since a lot of the thick bushes plants are yet to be fully buried.

After a useful tip-off from an Australian SDJ user planning a visit to Hakuba, I have updated the mapping resources section with some good quality free online maps.