Day 4 – Student-led Backcountry Tour (Mt. Shakunage)

Day four was the day that all the other days had led up to. This day was where us students would lead ourselves towards an objective in the backcountry within 1.5 hours drive of central Hirafu. “Remember,” said Ronan, “I only ski up a hill to ski down it. So your job is to safely guide me to the best downhill skiing you can find.” At the end of Day 3, we’d already made some tentative plans about where we might take Ronan. James was keen to head up Mt. Yotei, and I was partial to that idea too. I also had always wanted to summit Mt. Shakunage, pretty much just because the name of the mountain sounds cool. Plus there was supposed to be good skiing from the 1,000m peak north of Mt. Shakunage summit down to Naganuma Pond. The weather forecast for today, however, was dismal – rain and strong winds, with a freezing level above 1,300m. Even yesterday, Shannon, a student on the course who works as part of the operations staff at Go Snow, had suggested that we have a much less ambitious Plan B should the weather really pack in. At least three of us thought backcountry skiing near Kiroro Ski Resort might be worthwhile, so we tentatively put that down as a Plan B. In the evening of Day 3, I plotted out the three possible routes, and printed them off using NetworkPrint at Lawson Convenience Store for the morning meeting on Day 4. Those plans were:

Plan A (1) and Plan B had the attraction of having onsen very close to the trailhead – perfect if we were going to end up cold and wet at the end of the tour. Plan A (2) would have been awesome just because, well, Mt. Yotei! We all arrived at the Half-Note Bar at 8am. Ronan wanted us to present where we planned to take him at 9am. We got into the planning, checking windy.com to pin-point what the weather might be like at each location (for example, the weather at Mt. Shakunage). The weather was looking dismal in all locations, so we decided among ourselves that we’d head to Kiroro Resort. We could lap the slopes to the west behind the resort hotel, without committing too much to being out on exposed slopes for extended periods of time in the bad weather.