Winter Vacation Trip Part 3: Hitting the Slopes

KIT's Ikenodaira Seminar House is across the street from the Ikenodaira ski slopes. These were the true destination for the first half of our trip. Now, I'd brought all my ski gear less skis from the US, because the skis themselves would have cost their full MSRP in shipping once both ways were accounted for, and that is well above their current value having been used for several years. So I rented just skis from the rental shop, which is also across the street from the seminar house, for a grand total of $60 for three days, which was a good deal in my book - didn't have to sign them in and out each day, just had to bring them back before the end of the third day. Lift tickets were purchased by the building manager for us and distributed inside the seminar house - we were alerted by another cacophonous announcement to come and get them. Unlike the American system, where lift tickets are little tags that can be easily hung from the large number of zippers on the average coat, the Japanese ones at this place were just little cards. The cool kids all had clear pockets on the arms of their jackets to store these little cards in so that they would be safe, dry, and easily visible, but my jacket has no such feature so for the first few runs I fished the card out of a pocket to show the attendant while trying to keep moving with both poles in one hand - less than convenient or effective. I stopped bothering with showing it and they never stopped me, so I felt a little bad but since I had paid to be there didn't worry about it too much. Lift tickets were $20 for a full day or $10 for noon to five - outrageously cheap, even though the ski area was not the biggest I've seen.

Full picture set and one video of us sledding on an inflatable banana available here.

We particularly liked the Canadian flag on the restaurant named for Tom Sawyer at the base of the mountain.

The snow was mostly natural, as far as I could tell, though groomed and packed flat. The temperature varied across the three days of skiing and the snow went from wet and sticky to cold and extremely slick. Some areas were a little icy but I've skied much, much worse - no sheet ice and no chunks loose on the trail, overall quite decent. One morning when I went up early I got to ski a few trails as clearly either the second or third person to do so that day, which was nifty.

I was struck by how much Niigata looks like home compared to Ishikawa.

The views were good - there were a few places on the mountain where quick transitions between only being able to see the trail and the trees around it to being able to see half of Niigata occurred and those were quite dramatic. One of my favorite parts of skiing.

The weather out there was highly variable. We had sun with high temperatures, cold cold with driving snow, and a goodly stretch of completely impenetrable fog, which changed location on the mountains over time, so that during one run an area would be completely clear, and on the next visibility was about 15 feet.

Not an exaggeration - note the snow texture at the bottom - this was taken on the slopes.

Ski patrol house in the fog

Ana had been considering signing up for ski lessons, but it turned out that they tended to do lessons starting at the top of the real mountain rather than on the (completely absent) bunny slopes, and that sounded a bit more adventurous than she wanted. We did do a run or two at the base on this contraption, but mostly she hung out with other non-skiers and non-snowboarders in the lodge and got a lot of knitting done.

We may have been using the toddlers' sled for this part. There's a video on the Flickr page too.