Snowboarding Happo-One and Shiga Kogen

So while we had our friend Gaetano visiting us, we went snowboarding twice. Gaetano is a very experience snowboarder and purposely made his trip to Japan in the winter just to get some time on Japan's famous Nagano mountains!

The first trip was a day trip to Happo-one (Hap-oh-oh-nay), in Hakuba. We went with two other snowboarders from base. It was my first time driving on the Japanese expressways and I think I did a great job! We chose to go to Happo-one because it was one of the resorts that was host to the 1998 Nagano Olympics. We were able to snowboard down two different Olympic runs that day, and it was amazing!

Happo-one had THE BEST powder I had ever rode through before... it was amazing. We had fresh snow all day long too. Only downfall was the visibility was kinda low at times, and there was no view, but for that snow it was worth it! Below is a picture of all the snow at the start of one of the Olympic runs:

 

 

We had a blast at Happo-One and I would definitely go there again next year!

Just a few days later we were on the road again, this time to the famous Shiga Kogen resort area in Nagano. Shiga Kogen is a huge mountain with 21 interlinked resorts on it. We went to the largest and one of the more advanced resorts called Yakebitaiyama Ski Area. It was huge and amazing! And since we went during the week it was EMPTY... just like Happo-One was.

I didn't think it was possible, but the snow was even BETTER at Shiga Kogen!! I have never seen powder like that in my life. On a normal run there was at least 6-12" of fresh snow, but on the more advanced and ungroomed runs there was powder up to our knees and even thighs at points. Unbelievable!

This time Dereck was able to go with us, along with a few friends from base. All together there were 7 of us on the trip, which after snowboarding, also included a two night stay at a traditional Japanese Inn, and a day visiting the famous snow monkey park. I will write about those events in separate blogs though, so stay tuned!