70cm of fresh

Well, I'd say my ideal snowfall is around 40cm. On top of what's up there already that's enough to keep things smooth underfoot. Today was another one of those ridiculous days when you could barely move unless you had a good bit of steep and a freshly waxed board. It was good though, so long as you didn't run off the main drag and end up in quick-snow. I had to do some swimming on my first run just to get back on the tracks. It took me a while as well. And what's more, the snow quality today was absurdly lovely. I'd give any man my life savings if he could show me powder as light and dry as that outside of the big so-called world class ski areas in Europe and North America. For anybody who's been to Ajigasawa on a deep snow day and thought they were skiing powder, wake up and smell Hakkoda.

I found a mouse on the run today and made friends with it. It was stuck and couldn't get back to where it had come from so I picked it up and it started crawling all over my arms and gloves. This old man skiied up and saw what I had so I asked him what he'd do if he were me. He seemed confident that the best thing to do was to throw it into the powder snow so it could 'burrow' somewhere warm. I threw it, and it disappeared into oblivion.



Monkey-boy Chris fingering his way up the Captain wall on Sunday.