Day 4 - on snow all mountain

Something different today. We woke to maybe 1cm of snow on the ground. Today was the start of our all mountain time, so after breakfast we purchased our all mountain tickets for the next 3 days. They were 21,900yen for adult child pack, 21,500 for adult and 18,400 for student. So the adult child pack saved us about $100. While we were buying the tickets the snow started for real, yet the rain affect slush had now all turned to sheets of ice. So we had dust on sheet ice. With the top temp of -5 it was not going to soften.

We left Yakebitaiyama and skied down a hard ichinose Diamond, and over the bridge to Family. This too was hard and icy, and the quad chair to the top was not yet loading people. We ventured further to Takamagahara and skied a few runs here. Still hard ice, but the snow had started to add a bit of dust on top. By now the kids were cold, it was 10:30am, so we headed in for some hot chocolate, and found they also had a cake set. So cake and hot choc it was. Oscar and I had a lovely choc cookie piece cheesecake, Dale had strawberry cake and Jason had apple cake. We watched the snow fall steadily while we ate.

Warmed up we headed up Takamagahara's quad to the top then headed over to hoppo-bunadaira. Here we found some creamy powder, it was devine, and a nice change from scrapping ice. So we lapped this using the small gondola about 4 times. We ended up at the bottom of Giant and went to our fav, Aspen Shiga for lunch. As it was a bit later, around 1pm, they had sold out of their devine pastries. The kids got spaghetti, I got corn soup and Jason got pizza.

From here we walked to the gondola and went to the post office to send a postcard to Oscar's Principal. We also withdrew some cash. The machine charges 220yen fee. Now it was time to head back, all the higher elevations were in cloud. We caught the quad from near the small gondola, and skied towards Takamagahara and ended up on the other side of the road. So we crossed over and rode the quad up. Shortly after getting off we hit a slope full of sheet ice. Both kids had a few falls and butt slide the rest of the face. Once we were back in Takamagahara greens it was still hard ice, with a bit of dust to turn in.

A run of ichinose Family finished off this side, we then crossed the bridge rode up Diamond back to the Prince at 4pm. Ending with a last run of C1, which was scrapped and icy in places. We were cold, and headed straight for the onsen to warm up.

For dinner we thought we'd try something new. We caught the 5:35pm shuttle to ichinose and went to the izakaya down from the teppa room. The food was good, but not ideal for our family's tastes The 500yen per person table charge added an extra $20 to the bill. We left as a fight was breaking out between a group of patrons and the owner, and walked back to the Prince rather than waiting 45min for a shuttle.Read more