After spending a few days attempting to do what we could to help Leigh get his stuff in order and buying a new van Dan and I made the decision to head down to the village and get a bit closer to the ski hill and have easy access to Onsen and food as well. Leigh had gone through a lot and it was a good time to give him some space so we grabbed our gear and moved into the town.

Almost immediately the snow came back with night after night of 20 to 30cms occasionally going to sleep with no new snow and waking up to 30cms and best of all it rarely came with wind causing to snow to fall in unreal fluffy conditions.

By now we had the resort figured out and with a bit of early morning planning we were making the most out of each run grabbing the big crowded areas first and slowly moving to more remote zones as the day went on.

This went on day after day we certain runs always becoming our warm up as we figured out the trick to get first gondola day after day meeting other locals in the daily lineup.

Our plans had changed halfway through the trip but it had turned out for the better as we were quite a bit more submerged in the culture and with a 5 minute walk could be back at our accommodation from the resort.

As the trip went on we explored all the little in between spots getting to know different gully systems and other good tree skiing options. Our runs would be thought out by time, aspect and potential conditions and we were doing hot laps like a well oiled machine.

It was pretty much Dan Oster from Australia and I as a team getting to know the different zones and staying away from more crowed areas along the way.   

Days blended to weeks as we occasionally stop for pictures but mainly doing top to bottom runs in an average of 25 minutes with our only breaks being in the gondola. We were literally riding from first Gondola to the last.

As the more open runs would begin to get tracked out we would move over to more dense trees and find valleys still untracked snaking our way through semi dense Japanese forest, than the next storm would just reset it day after day.

By the end of the trip I had a really good locals knowledge of the area and had figured out some of the many awesome secrets about Nozowa Onsen. We had chose it because it doesn’t have nearly as awesome terrain as Hakuba nor the snowfall of Myoko Kogen but for me it was the good in between. I knew I would have to be back the upcoming year.

It was definitely a trip filled with highs and lows but in the end we had a great time and I got to know Dan quite a bit better as we pretty much lived together for more than 3 weeks sharing our experiences. I leave you now with this shot of a Kamachitka on one of the many ridges we got to know well over the last 3 weeks.