A fun camping mission to the heart of the Yubari Mountains for an unknown couloir, a mysterious skid mark on the satellite imagery. There is some really wild terrain behind the front range, with some decent vertical relief.
Cheers Yudai Suzuki for the endless motivation.
This zone reminds me of New Zealand, but instead of hanging glaciers, its buzzy little worlds of hanging jungle dislocated by large structures where the geology suddenly changes. Hokkaido is not flat.
Things are friendly and rounded rhyolite around Nunobedake, but as you head deeper into the backcountry and move out of view, there is a sudden transition to beds of sandstone and limestone that strike parallel to the spine of the range, commanding the terrain and producing galleries of couloirs.
We did this a few weeks ago in mid Jan, all up it was 2 days spent climbing 3000m and skiing 20km. The conditions were cold, deep and tiring, but it was really beautiful.
The line we went for was a S facing labyrinth and I think it worked out pretty well. Snow was pretty average in that line relative to literally anything else we could have skied... but I feel super satisfied, and that was the goal.
Next time I will go for a more powdery aspect 🤤
