Japan Day Thirteen : Hakuba 2nd day on the slopes....

I woke up feeling a little worse for wear, but upon looking outside and seeing about ten inches of fresh snow, I felt a lot better.

Had my breakfast and said goodbye to Dawesy and Kell. They were off to Tokyo and Woo and I had given them very specific instructions of where was good and what they should try to check out. After getting my gear together, it was out to the mountain again.

Josh, whom Woo had nicknamed 'Gigantor', had offered to give Woo a lesson the next morning, so we went out with him and his girlfriend Kirsty. Unfortunately they kinda weren't thinking when they jumped on the big lift, and now me and Woo were halfway up the mountain and nowhere near any wide beginner runs. We only had the trail to go back down, and while it's a very shallow decline, its only the width of a road, and has a sheer dropoff on one side. Not the place you want to be when you are just learning. Woo did quite well before he cracked it again and picked up his board. I went off down the hill and did a few runs before I saw him at the bottom again.

We did another run, and Woo barely fell over at all, but his muscles were sore from all the constant stiffness, so he decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel. I stayed out to keep practicing my carving. I kept going until about 2pm, but then started to feel as if I was actually getting worse. I was ready to go home myself, however decided to dtay out due to the amazing powder still on offer. I wasn't sure if we'd get another night of snow this good, hence I didn't want to waste it. I did quite a few more runs and was carving without any problems, so I decided to try a new run. It meant going up a really long chair lift, then I would be doing an intermediate, that would later turn into a beginner and then back onto the slope I was used to.

I got up to the top of the run and every sphincter I have puckered up. The red (intermediate) run did not look this steep from below. I actually had to walk around a bit and take out a map, as I was sure this was too steep to be intermediate, but alas, it was the correct run and it was my only way down. I strapped in and headed off extremely slowly, in fact, I did the whole run in incredibly slow leaf style. I was scary as shit and I was tense the whole way, but I got down with no problems. Once I got back to the green run, I was apples and carved my way down to the bottom and got on the bus to come back to the hotel. I later spoke to one of the guys who snowboards in Europe a lot, and apparently that would be a Black run in Europe. Holy Crap!

I got home and Woo was reading my book, which is not entirely suprising as I'd been going on about how good it is all holiday. We had a fairly quiet dinner with the Melbourne crew, who all leave tomorrow and then retired early so we can rest our weary bodies. My glutes, coccyx and neck are all particularly sore, and I'm nearly out of Voltaren gel.