Skiing in style
New Snow (Resort): 20cm (Yamabiko)
New Snow (Village): 0cm
Weather: Fine
Snow Depth: 250cm (Yamabiko)
Outlook: Warm temperatures throughout the week.
Open Areas: The bottom half of Skyline is now closed, along with all the steeps on the bottom half of the mountain apart from Challenge and Gran Prix.
I was woken up this morning by very heavy rain at about 6am. Around 8am this turned to sleet for a few moments and there were some bursts of very loud thunder and lightening. Very heavy snow fell at the top of the mountain, which delayed the opening of the Yamabiko lifts for 30 minutes. The snow on Yamabiko was around boot deep, but very sticky. It was so slow that it was actually very difficult to keep momentum going forward.
Yellow sand blown over from the Gobi Desert
There was a 2-3 cm layer brown-yellow tinged snow which probably had an effect on things – this was due to the “Kosa” or yellow sand which gets blown over from the deserts of Mongolia and China. It was really very noticable on the snow today – probably the worst I have ever seen it.
In the forecast we have a couple of very warm days ahead, followed by some showers and light snow.