Jan 5 - Shiga Kogen - all mountain

Our usual wake, breakfast and geared up is now routine. We went up the quad chair and down E1 to D1 headed for Gondola 1. After we rode this up we did the impossible traverse (how is it up hill both ways?) to Okushiga kogen. From here we skied down past the top lifts to the forest trail and then down through the wooded run beside the lower pair chair that the kids love. We did a few laps of this until about 11:30am. After this we rode all the lifts back up and traversed unto Yakebitaiyama again.

This time we down E1 to gondola 2. From the top of gondola 2 we headed down C2 to the Diamond connection chair. From Diamond we went down, then over the bridge to Family. After a run on the green, we rode chair B back up to the traverse to Tanne no mori, we skied to the chair and continued to traverse across Takamagahara and the crossed the road to the pizza eatery for lunch at 12:30. The temperature had dropped noticeably, and when we were inside eating we noticed it had started snowing. I had a pork tonkatsu with rice, Dale had the mushroom pizza, Oscar had spaghetti bolognaise and Jason had the gluten free curry.

At about 1:20 we here and headed to Tanne no mori. This has been one of our favourite spots for some cool short runs, powder stashes and tree runs. We did about 5-6 runs here until we headed off at 2:45pm and the snow was really coming down with low visibility, we did the green run at Family, before making tracks over the bridge, up Diamond and back to Prince with a final C1 run to finish us off for the day at 3:30pm. Very cold, and a tad wet.

Then it was a lazy evening in the hotel and a much needed onsen.Read more