Place For Return

Okay today was something a little bit different. Yes there was snowboarding involved. Yes there was a lift. Yes there was some epic powder. Yes there was Tony. Yes there was some mystery drink. Yes there was a steamed bun. Yes there was face shots galore. So how was today different? Well, in a number of ways.

First and foremost was the fact that I was riding on the side of an active volcano. The first time that I have ever done such a thing. It was Mt Asahidake, the highest mountain in the prefecture of Hokkaido. Looking at it today you wouldn't really know that it is an active volcano. Well, there was a ten second window where the skies cleared and you could look up the mountain. Up a little bit higher there was steam spewing out the side of the mountain. Apparently it's always like that, and there are some hot springs and things up there. I think that's pretty neat.

Second of all, I was wearing a backpack. I normally don't like wearing a backpack when I ride, simply because I think they kind of get in the way, and I don't really want to land on one because it could hurt. It can hurt enough already without landing on the random crap that people keep in backpacks. I know that sometimes you're up there and you sometimes wish that you'd brought such and such with you and that if you're carrying a bag then you're more likely to have the item you were after, but most of the time you don't really need it. I guess. So yeah, the reason I was wearing a backpack today was because I was on a backcountry tour thing where they kitted us out with an backpack and an avalanche beacon. I can tell you what the avalanche beacon is for, and I can also tell you that there was never any chance of us being in an avalanche today. The backpack though? I have no idea why I was carrying that thing? Maybe to make us all look tough? The guide, Toshi, didn't even show us what was in them. That was okay with me though, I guess they had to justify the sky high price of the trip somehow, and kitting us out with useless gear is one way of doing that.

Umm, were there any other ways in which today was different? Yeah. There was. Instead of having a barbecue pork bun or a pizza bun I had a sweet bean one. I think that I should have stuck with the pork ones.

I managed to break some of my gear, although that's nothing new. I lost the clip off one of my bindings at the top of the mountain, but thankfully someone behind had found it. Still, my hand just about froze when I was trying to reattach it. It was -20 today, plus the wind, so that's pretty chilly.

I thought that I saw someone I knew at Mt Asahidake. I thought that it was Mel, Nigel's old girlfriend. It was this shorter girl, with a nose piercing, and a thin sort of a face. She was snowboarding and seemed to be avoiding me, so I thought that it could be her. But it wasn't.

Asahidake was pretty sweet. Unbelievably deep in some portions. The first run I didn't see the nose of my board at all, so I had to set my bindings back as far as I could. It helped. Asahidake was an interesting moutain. There's a cable car, and apparently the mountain is just about empty all the time, unfortunately today was the last day of a long weekend, so it was reasonably busy. At the top of the mountain everyone piles out of the cable car and then disappears. Then everybody reappears again at the bottom in the line for the cable car. It's weird. There are no definite runs down. There is a cat track that everyone takes, but it's not marked. The cat track is long. The part of the run that is actually interesting is the first section. It only goes for a minute or two. Not terribly long. But deep. The snow was really deep. There was one run where I couldn't see for a while simply because I was creating a bow wave type thing that went up over my face. It was amazing. The snow was a little heavy, but pretty good generally. I think that I've just been a little bit spoiled recently.

So tonight Tony and I had dinner with the three other people who came to Asahidake with us today. All 5 of us were Queenslanders. There was Kirra, who is a Virgin hostie and lives with her boyfriend, Matthew, up on the Sunshine Coast. Then there was George who is over for 2 weeks by himself. He's married with two kids and another on the way. Is it just a Brisbane thing where people ask what school you went to? Because it was a little bit weird. Anyways, George went to Nudgee and Matthew went to Churchie. So there you go.

For dinner I had sushi for the firs time since being in Japan. It was good. There was this weird egg pudding thing, I liked it. After dinner we had an ice cream and then I came here and typed this up.