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| Heavy snows up high recently, and not too bad down below. |
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| Heading up the lower portion of the first pitch up Darumagamine the snow here is almost ready, the base is not quite firm enough. Feeling good and confident from all the MTB riding. |
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| surfs up on the top |
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| a good 2 meters worth |
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good skiing ahead |
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| This is Hyogo (or Japan) weather in microcosm. To the right (north) the heavy weather from the sea brings snow. on the left the sun prevails. We are smack dab in the middle. |
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| It never ceases to amaze me that the Inland Sea is visible from this distance. |
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| The three sentinel pines at the foot of Futougamine |
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| The trailless peak of Hachimansan, which supposedly has some other-wordly significance. |
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| 3 hours of climbing and a well deserved lunch break at the cache spot. |
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| Just behind the lunch and cache spot it opens up into this beautiful glade when the snow is deep enough. The plan is to ski right down the center and follow the ridge down all the way to the logging road. Then take the logging road back to my house, about 4 km. and get my car from the trailhead tomorrow. |
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| After an hour semi-lost, exhausted, and thankful to be back at the trail. I came out just above the 3 pines at 3pm and a long way to go back down. |
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| The red line marks my decent approximately. The yellow rectangles were planned ski routes. As I got lower the woods became impassible on skis. The snow depth was more than sufficient, but the brush was too thick to ski through. The blue line marks my retreat back to the trail. It was only 300? meters or so, but was so difficult that at times I was crawling to make any headway in the sometimes thigh deep snow. My skis provided no help in the traverse as the brush was too thick and the terrain too steep. I have to admit that there were two moments when it seemed I'd be spending a long cold night up there before finding the trail. Retracing my tracks 600m. or so back to the cache uphill was my last resort, going laterally 300m. was difficult enough. |
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| And miles to go before I sleep, halfway home. |
