Sunway - before & beyond

Day: 6

Location: Hakuba Alps, Nagano Prefecture, Japan

The bus from Nagano had, as far as I could tell, only Australians on it. Apparently we're a part of the furniture around here during ski season. I've met people from Adelaide, Gold Coast and Cairns apart from locals of course.

This is my first attempt at snowboarding and I imagine it was obvious for at least part of the first day. The number of times I fell decreased exponentially from 15 or so to three on my first and second runs. There was a particularly graceful 'dismount' of the chair lift the first or second time I used it too, which left me flat on the ground face-first. The polite lift attendants were either too nice to laugh or very discrete about doing so. By the end of the day though I was able to do a whole run without falling once and also grab a modest amount of air off a couple of humps set up on the slope. Some of you will be pleased to know that all of this was, and will continue to be done with a helmet and wrist-guards on given previous arguments I've had with gravity and the ground.

This morning after such a successful - even though often supine or prostrate - day yesterday, I expected and was looking forward to getting out and carving up the freshly-groomed run. Unfortunately things weren't the same as they were the previous evening and I felt much less steady than I had expected to.  So of course it took more falling over, more snow in the face etc. before things were feeling good again. We decided to head up to the other side of the resort that our lift passes include Hakuba 47 (as opposed to Goryu where we spent the first day and this morning). We were forced to take it slow as it was snowing and visibility wasn't fantastic but what we discovered was awesome. It was the long 'snakey' part of 47 that you'll see on the far right of the map.

Something about the corners and banks of this run was incredible. Much more variety than a long, wide hill to cruise down. Bliss.
The visibility this first time was average because of, funnily enough, snow. I had to go again. By this time the snow had cleared and I saw the view from the top of 47 and realised the greatness of the previous run would get even better. All the way up on the lift you could see the huge valley below and the other mountains that surrond it. Tomorrow I'll take photos.
So a day that started off shaky, finished spectacularly. We're in for a toasty top of -5 tomorrow and can't wait to be out there again!