Oh, to soak every morning, what a way to start the day, I love the Onsens. The Japanese have this dialed!

Today was our first day in the backcountry and we were again greeted by great powder, high winds up high and cold temperatures. We continued the early morning Onsen tradition here at Barden. We started our day with some beacon training, to make sure the group members each had a good knowledge of the way their own beacon worked. Once everyone was up to speed and comfortable, we headed up on a bus to get some more altitude fast and try for some views of the whole Tokicha-dake range.

Today we traveled to the interior to the national forest in the Furano region of Hokkaido to get settled at our new home, the Barden, for the next three days of backcountry skiing. We piled in the bus and everyone got some well deserved rest, listened to music and ate. It was a long bus journey, about 7 hours with our driver getting lost more than once!

Today we started out at Moiwa, another Niseko resort close to our hotel, (the Kanronomori), and the sun was shining and we could see the volcano, Mt. Yotei, clear as day and all of Niseko, which was a nice change after being in the blizzard for days now. We paid for one ride up Moiwa and headed out of the gates there to ski in the backcountry to an Onsen. It was everything we hoped it would be, skining up a scenic ridge with incredible views, great powder turns in the sunshine and then relaxing afternoon soaking in the hot springs. The powder was a bit wind buffed and creamy.

It’s hard to add any photos of this day because there was absolutely NO visibility and it dumped snow harder than any us of have ever experienced. It was snowing, by our calculations 4” per hour, only in Japan. There were a lot of “Arregatos” shouted from beneath the powder on this day. I can’t remember any turns that were not faceshots, perhaps the deepest snow I have ever skied. Grand Hirafu was not operating fully today, only the lower lifts were open as there was no visibility. All the out of bounds stuff remained closed.