Teine's Deep and Steeps

THURSDAY, MARCH 15th, 2007

TEINE HIGHLAND

The snow has come back to this part of the world, and FF convinced me to make use of it. Hokkaido's snow in March can range from dry/perfect snow, to wet-unstable-layered snow, to rain falling and just drenching you before you can even find out the snow quality.

Up at 6am to dig out the Civic, then get my gear all strapped on, then pick up FF at the subway. We actually made it to Teine in pretty good time, by 910. Unfortunately, the ropeway still wasnt running. No reason was given, it wasn't the wind (it was almost non existant), but may have been too much snow at the top. The ropeway is getting pretty old, and there are times when the car gets to the top station where it drags against the snowbanks.

FF is still getting his bearings on the sticks so he bolted off to hit the groomers which were pretty good today too. I met a guy named Jerry from the UK and we ended up riding together for a few hours, turns out we have a mutual friend who used to live here. Good guy, showed me a lot of stashes on the hill. There was so much snow today, couldnt really go wrong. When the ropeway did open at 11, we bombed through the bowls but with 10-15 Gaijin on the hill it only took 15 minutes for it to be pretty run over.

The 4 hours pass(at about $36 is both a great deal and a great idea) ran out by 115. Just perfect to tire yourself out for 4 hours, rather than like in Canada, where you can either pay $80 for a full day, or $60 for a half day starting at 1pm when all the soft snow is long gone... I dropped Double F at his nearby station and he dropped his garbage into my car, nice guy that kid. Drove up to Otaru to my classrooms and a two hour company parking spot treasure hunt, before 3 classes of parent observations. At least it was a good morning....