Accepting the arrival of Spring
The Hokkaido "long" spring has begun
I love the spring season in the mountains of Japan! Here in Hokkaido unfortunately not many people seem to share this love and passion for spring skiing. The resorts are quite lacking in customers these days and the lift lines are short or non-existent.
Let me make a sales pitch for spring skiing.
Spring is a fickle season. For me personally, the true signal that spring has arrived is the large glide cracks that appear in the snowpack. Sometimes they come early in the season and sometimes quite late. This year the cracks and full-depth snow slides have arrived quite late thanks to cold temperatures and stable conditions throughout March.
The photos seen in this post were all taken on the 26th of March and I was pleasantly surprised to see the mountains still so clean and white.
Another sign of spring is the “Kosa” or Gobi desert sand which blows across from China in the spring. Southwesterly warm winds bring a fine layer of brown sand that coats everything including the snowpack. A layer of Kosa can ruin the skiing experience. It sticks to the sole of your snow sliding device and makes it painfully slow.
In the spring the forests also seem to shed a lot of bark leaves and dirt. The wind storms whip all this around and spread it across the slopes. Soon the once pristine white trails are now gray and brown.
I surely am making spring skiing sound terrible. Sorry. There is a window of opportunity, a moment of brilliance in amongst all those minus attributes. Before the sand comes, when the temperature is just right. The snow is soft and yet fast. The skies are a deep blue and the air still has a tinge of winter cold. The first cracks and snow slides have appeared on the mountains, but the resort trails are perfectly groomed and clean.
That magical window of opportunity was all of this week here in the Sapporo/Shiribeshi area! Great weather for about 5 days, perfect temperatures and no desert sand!
So it is official now, the end of winter and the beginning of spring is here! Depending on the weather and temperature over the next month we may be able to extend this spring well into May. Niseko Hirafu and Sapporo Kokusai are scheduled to be open until the end of the Golden Week Holidays around the 10th of May.
Yesterday on the lift I spoke with one of the young skiers pictured above, visiting from Gifu prefecture. He told me that spring skiing at resorts like Takasu and Dyna Land is very busy during the spring season. So apparently the exodus from the mountains may be a Hokkaido issue, rather than a nationwide problem.
Maybe the fact that the winters are so long and cold here, people just want to get past it and move on to something new and warmer. Either way, I understand this sentiment as well, but I still love the long spring that has just begun!