It’s official! There’s plenty of snow in Hakuba! We were able to verify this by riding lap after lap of bottomless conditions today at Hakuba 47……our longest lift-line being about 12 seconds. This is great news for those coming up for a white Christmas in Hakuba and means you can put away your early season rock boards and bring out the good stuff!

After a couple of weeks of being teased, winter has officially kicked in in full force!

Friday morning had us cutting fresh line after line of 30cm deep powder off line c at Hakuba 47……and today all our guests came back from Happo wearing big smiles with tales of bottomless conditions!

The good news is, it hasn’t stopped snowing since! And Sunday Monday, looking like clear skies, may be the first “epic” days of the season! In fact, the skiing should be excellent all next week as the forecast calls for cold temperatures and more snow……..so for the city folk contemplating when to use those “sick days”, deep powder and no crowds are something you may want to take into consideration.

A quick note about our name, the word “Mori” means forest in Japanese while “no” is the possessive, meaning “belonging to”. So the name Morino Lodge has nothing to do with sheep, but directly translates to “lodge belonging to the forest”. The pics above are of some of the forest surrounding us.

Wax your boards!

Our first guests of the 2007/2008 ski season arrived for two days of R&R at Morino Lodge. The kids outnumbered adults and activities included hide and seek in the massive cavernous maze of Morino lodge, some kind of video game that involved jumping up and down and waving your arms, sledging and singing christmas carols (Hakuba’s very first carol group!)

The finale was a Firework show concocted by pyrotechnic genius Paul whose final piece will surely go down in the annals of Morino Lodge history!

Thanks for a great weekend guys and we look forward to seeing you around Christmas and in the spring!

Goryu and Happo are now open for the 2007/2008 season. I missed the opening day for Goryu yesterday but made it to Happo today for their opening day. Although theres only maybe 15cm at the bottom of the mountain the top half is looking very good indead. Probably a metre or so has settled above 1300m in the last week setting up an excellent base for the snow to come.

Not super deep (maybe lower calf deep) but pretty decent powder lay in await at the top of the gondola. By the time we took pics it had already been tracked out but not bad for the first day of the season in November!!

The temperature plunged yesterday and dumping rain turned into dumping snow last night..The good news..15cm of fresh snow in the Morino Lodge car park which soon started melting as the day warmed up. Not sure how much fell up top but probably significantly more plus it looks like more snow is on its way by tuesday/wednesday. I’m tempted to break out the rock board and hike up a bit to see how much is rideable. Hopefully we won’t have to wait much longer until we can catch the lifts up instead!!

On the left you can see the Lounge and on the right is Happo with quite a bit of snow. The bottom slopes were melting by afternoon but the upper slopes look like they got a good dump.

Hakuba 47’s slopes looked inviting and Aokiko also got a coating too. Check back on Wednesday for an update on the next snowfall..

Last night we had snow down to about 1500m. Hopefully the snow on the top of the resorts will stick around to act as a base for the snow this weekend. Things are definitely starting to gear up for the season!

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves!

After that it was off to Naughty’s in Tsugaike for the Dafunda 2007 DVD release party.

Its been raining in the village the last couple of days but awoke today to glorious weather and the first real dump of snow this season on the tops

I walked down to the Matsukawa river and took some shots. Not long till winter now!!

We’d been itching to get a group together to go canyoning and now was our chance. Jack & Ayumi were up from Gifu prefecture and guests were still at the lodge recovering from all the partying. Add a few locals and we had a fifteen-man strong group to brave the rapids. First stop was Evergreen where everyone got suited up - Summer in Hakuba is pretty hot but the water in the canyon has its source high up in the mountains so a wetsuit helps delay the onset of hypothermia. It also helps you slither over the rocks as you make your way down the rapids like a seal.

Then it was off to Ochikura, a canyon that drops down from high above Tsugaike. First obstacle after walking down into the gorge was a pretty scary flying fox death slide followed by a series of rapids and waterfalls. The highlight was probably the superman slide down the wall of a 10m waterfall into a deep plunge pool. Unfortunately the other group that day had the camera so we didn’t get any pics from within the canyon itself but here are some from another group that did it.

Had a great half day and we’ll definitely be back again to do the full day course!

Obon week - A week long holiday in Japan where people traditionally return to their place of birth to visit the graves of ancestors…

…Except for the thousands of people who flock to Hakuba to escape the heat and…PARTY!!

Friends from Tokyo and Guests alike filled the lodge for Obon week. Just down the road from the lodge “Mother” , a four day party commenced at Tsugaike ski resort. Something told me we weren’t going to get much sleep this week.

At least we had Aokiko lake to cool down in after.