Still No Snow

An advantage with skiing in Japan is that when we can't ski there are still really cool things to do. Close to Myoko where we are, there are famous temples and castles. So, we took a day off skiing and went sightseeing.

We visited a Buddhist Temple

After the temple and a lunch with really great sushi in Nagano, the trip continued to Matsumoto Castle, a 400 year old 6 story castle built in wood. Pretty amazing actually.

Impressive even now, built in the 1590:s

The day after the sightseeing, we're still waiting for the snow to fall. My plan was to do some easy skiing, and then dig a snow pit and do a full profile. It did not start too well, I lost my season pass in the first lift up. Sigh. After a couple of hours of lost-in-translation talking with various Japanese via Google Translate, and some fruitless searching under the lift, it actually resurfaced! Yeay!

This took some time, so I essentially went for lunch, and then dug my snow pit.

Me and 40 non-westerners had lunch.

Lots of undervegetation caused some problems digging, but it was still interesting.

Shearer Shelf and thermo in the shade.

It turns out there's a layer of depth hoar at the bottom! Really weak too, it collapsed when I was isolating a compression test column even before I had the chance to actually load it. We need to be careful, that's for sure.