We actually started Golden Week a little early and Monday evening we drove three hours to Jeff's house in Hakuba.
Tuesday we skied at Tsugaike Kogen. Most of the ski ares in Hakuba were already closed for the season, but a couple of them are high enough that they still had snow on the higher runs. We had to take a gondola from the base of the ski area to a section of the mountain that was higher up where there was still snow and a couple of chairlifts. Then at the end of the day was had to take the gondola back down to the base of the mountain.
It's Me!
Jeff hitting a jump in the terrain park.
After skiing we packed up our stuff and drove three hours to Mount Fuji. The drive turned out to be a bit of an adventure. When we were getting on the freeway we took the wrong entrance and got on the freeway going away from Mount Fuji. This normally would not have been a big problem, but it turned out that the next exit where we could turn around and get going in the correct direction was 20 km away. We finally get near a small town near Mount Fuji where we're going to get a hotel for the night. But we're running really low on gas so we stop at a gas station. But the gas station turns out to be closed. We have the car GPS tell us where the next gas station is and headed for it. When we get there it's also closed. At this point we're in the middle of nowhere and getting worried that we're about to run out of gas. We go to three more gas station and they're all closed. After over half an hour of searching we finally found an open gas station and were able to fill up.
Wednesday was Greenery Day, the first of the Golden Week holidays. And the day we climbed Mount Fuji. You can read all of the details of the climb a little bit farther down in my blog.
Climbing Mt Fuji.
Wednesday evening after climbing Mount Fuji we drove back to Tokyo. I spent most of Thursday taking it easy and resting back in Tokyo. Then Friday we drove back up to Hakuba.
On Saturday we spent the first half of the day doing some spring skiing at Hakuba 47. After skiing we went downhill mountain biking on some local trails around Hakuba.
Me coming down one of the mountain bike trails.
We were using cars to shuttle our bikes and us from the bottom of the trails back to the top of the mountain. There was 6 of us, so at times it looked a little bit like we had a clown car as we stuffed as many people and bikes as we could into small Japanese cars for the ride back to the top.
How many people and bikes can fit into one small Japanese truck?
On Sunday we spent the morning skiing at Tsugaike Kogen. Most of the snow was gone and there was not a lot to do, so Jeff and Pinky started trying to go off a jump together. It took them a few tries, but they finally got the timing correct.
Jeff and Pinky show off their sencronized jumping skills.
And then we did some more downhill mountain biking. We found a cool drop off jump and took turns jumping off.
Looking good so far.
Unfortunately my landing wasn't pretty. The bike I was using had clipless pedals, but I wasn't wearing the correct type of shoes so they were a bit slippery. When I landed both my feet slipped off the pedals and I came close to damaging myself on the seat, but I managed to save it.
Things get ugly.
One Monday we drove to a ski area near Mount Fuji called Fujimi Panorama that has real downhill mountain bike courses set up, where you could bring the bikes up to the top of the mountain in the gondola and then ride down.
Pinky coming down the trail.
After biking we drove back to Hakuba where I picked up my stuff and took the Shinkansen back to Tokyo.
Sometimes hard to find correct way at entrance of freeway even though Japanese.It is big problem that elderly person sometimes run freeway reversely when they went wrong entrance. You were going to entrance of Toyama which seems like to Fujisan, weren't you? It was consoling to find open gas station.
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