Better late than never. Here is a look at last season in Nozawa Onsen.
I arrived in Nozawa Onsen on November 21st last season with grand plans to ride a lot of powder before anyone else got there. Unfortunately it turned out to be an unseasonably late start to the season with hardly anything falling for almost a month. About a week before Christmas an amazing month long deluge of snow started. In the space of just a few days snow depths jumped from just a few cm at the top of the resort to a metre from top to bottom. The resort did a great job getting all areas open as soon as possible.
A collection of photos from last season.
The snowless days were few and far between, and each system that rolled through seemed to be even bigger than the last. I want to pick out a day that I can say was the best, but there were just so many days spent making a pig of myself in the powder down the likes of Schneider, Challenge and Utopia that I couldn’t narrow it down to just one.
The month-long snow culminated with a superdump for three days leading up to the fire festival. During the fire festival blizzard conditions were extreme and the shrine became so heavy with snow that the actual fire attacks were rendered redundant. There was no way that was going to burn. The actual kerosene assisted ritual burning at the end of the festival was delayed by quite some time and it didn’t really go up with much gusto when it did finally catch. Despite the somewhat disappointing fire festival, everyone went home that night duly impressed with Mother Nature’s ability to turn on a show.
After the fire festival Nozawa went through a dry spell with very little snow (and more rain than we would have liked). There were a few small falls up top and then another pretty big dump at the start of February, but for the most part it seemed like the skies had been snowed out.
My time in Nozawa came to an end in the middle of February, and unfortunately I didn’t get the powdery sendoff I had been hoping for. In fact it was quite dry for most of February, until once again it started snowing hard at the end of March. You would definitely not want to plan a trip to Nozawa in March with your hopes held high for powder, but for the last four seasons late March has produced some exceptional powder days. Thanks to the powder gods for this, but for 2010/2011 we must all have our fingers crossed for a more timely start to the season and plain old consistent powder days in January and February.