Day 12: Jan 14th – Kokusai
Day 1 with the Pugski crew! We have Susan, Gary, Zach and his buddy Paul from Boston. There are 3 skiers and 1 snowboarder. Plenty of room in the van then! We had the whole group together and it was day one on the mountain. The report was for moderate snow showers overnight (8cm) and then clearing up to bluebird later in the morning. The winds were light and it would be a beautiful day. We were up early and made it to Kokusai around 840am. We bought a full day pass and then got in line.
We made it to the top and were the first one’s out of the gate. I decided we should do a quick lap and hike on our second run. The snow was great, the previous tracks had not been fully filled in but in places where you hit the previous fresh snow as well, it was above the knee. I got a couple of nice faceshots and there was some decent hooting and hollering from the rest of the group. We took it slow on the way out so I could show in detail the line out. Then it was time for a hike.
We saw a couple of groups heading out and the skin track was somewhat busy. There were a couple of Japanese groups heading to the same place as us. We looked at the open face and it looked mint. There were still a few old tracks sticking out but plenty of untouched lines to be had. I dropped in first and skied the same sub-ridge that had been so good. Then I filmed the others coming down one at a time. There were some epic faceshots and with the blue sky, we got some amazing footage. What a run.
Then it was time to skin back to the main ridge. That didn’t take long, maybe 8 minutes before we could take the skins off. We traversed over 2 smaller ridges and then found a really nice untouched face. The skiing was really nice, soft and deep. We enjoyed great skiing all the way to the creek and then made the crossing which was well-established. It’s nice not to have to break trail all the time.
We had some lunch and then it was time to do some more beacon training. We went up on a side-chairlift and then found an open spot with untouched snow, out of the way. We stepped out the area to compact the snow and then I demoed a single rescuer, 1 beacon scenario. I got the guys to practice and then we got disturbed by a young mountain ops guy on a sled who was concerned that we were too close to the boundary. I tried hard to tell him that we were just doing beacon practice and that we weren’t causing any problems. He wanted us to get back on the trail but I persisted by saying we weren’t skiing, just training. He really didn’t understand us but finally gave up on us. I sensed someone official who spoke better English would be sent our way soon…..
Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, I ski patroller turned up. I waved and said hello (got to be friendly in these situations) and he came over to us. I thought I recognized his face and sure enough, it was a guy I had friended on Facebook. I thought he was a guide and not a ski patroller as well. I think he thought we were skiing in the out-of-bounds area with the ski resort but I assured him we had been skiing in the backcountry. He was ok with that. We chatted a little and after a while he got bored and took off. We worked till 3pm and then it started to get really cold. We headed down and back to the baselodge.
I had jokingly said to the crew that I was worried that we had had such a great start to the trip and no everyone would have too big of expectations with the quality of skiing we had had at the start! Hopefully we can keep finding the goods!
@SBrown
@SBrown
@SBrown
@Zach attack!
@Zach
Paul
Paul
Paul
- Matt