Summit Day

At least that was the plan.  With no new snow for the last two days, the runs were pretty skied out.  On top of that, the weather warmed up drastically, with afternoon temps in the low 30's.  It was forecast to be sunny all day, a rarity, with moderate winds.  We decided to make an attempt on the summit. Asahidake is the highest mountain in Hokkaido, but it only tops out at 7,516'.  The gondola takes you to 5,250', so it is not a long ways to climb.

On top of no new snow, the mountain had been blasted by high winds for days.  We knew from previous day's excursions that the shortest, most direct route to the summit was pretty icy.  We came to Japan to ski powder, so we left all our mountaineering gear with the sharp pointy parts home.  We were rueing that decision now.  We heard there was a lower angle snowfield all the way around on the opposite (North) side of the mountain.  Some people we met on the lift were going to climb the direct route ( with their ski crampons) and ski down the back side.  Not wanting to commit to skiing a slope we had never seen, and knowing we couldn't safely climb back down the mountain without crampons, we elected to ski around to the North side and climb the slope we would have to ski down.

The day was spectacularly clear, with gorgeous views of the mountain rising above us.

With absolutely no idea of the best route, we headed off at 9:30 am, angling up the side of the mountain as we tried to circumnavigate to the back side.  This proved to be a mistake.  We had no trouble climbing up the snow covered gulleys, but we had to cross ice covered rock bands between the gulleys.  This would have been quite easy with crampons and an ice axe, but was decidedly sketchy without.

We worked our way up and up, hoping to find a spot to cross. It became apparent that the correct route was to traverse around the base of the mountain, below all the ice and rock bands.  By 11:30 we had climbed to 6,585', well below the summit, but we had run out of snow.  The ice was just to dangerous to cross, so we decided to ski down and start over on the correct route.

The skiing was brutal at first, with large waves of firm snow to deal with.  As we got lower, it got better, and was even fun for a bit.  Back on safer ground, we continued around the base of the mountain.  It was still sunny, but the wind was blowing strongly, making it pretty chilly.  As we traversed along, we saw people skiing out of a deep ravine below us, so we knew we were on the right track.  We then saw a group traversing off the summit ridge and dropping in above us, so we were confident we were on the right track. We felt we could make the summit in just another hour of climbing.

The skinning was pretty easy at this point, and we could pretty much go straight towards the top.  It is so different from California ski mountaineering. Here we were, high above tree line in a full alpine environment, yet we could breath easily despite the strenuous effort, as we were thousands of feet lower than California mountains.

Our luck soon ran out though.  As we climbed higher, the snow became thinner and thinner due to the wind scouring.

We continued to piece together strips and patches of snow between the ice.  We could now see that the people who "skied" off the summit had side-slipped several huge patches of ice.  That is something that we could have also pulled off, but there was just no way for us to climb the ice to the summit.  Finally, at 7,200' we totally ran out of snow.  The summit was only 300' above us, and with the proper tools it was only a few minutes away.  For us, though, the climbing was done.

We removed our skins and began our descent.  The sastrugi snow formations were brutal on the knees.  As we descended, they got smaller and the skiing got smoother.

We even found a stash of wind blown powder in the bottom of a steep chute.

As we reached the base of the snowfield, we began traversing back towards the gondola.  We had two choices, to climb back to the elevation of the gondola, or follow some other tracks down a canyon well off to the side.  

We had plenty of daylight, and a pretty good idea where then tracks went, so we decided to follow them.  We ended up skiing down far from the actual ski area, and slopes that had been pristine powder yesterday were now deep, sloppy mush.  The south facing slopes were starting to have shallow wet slides, so we had to choose our route carefully.

Eventually we hit the flatter mid section of the mountain.  We couldn't ski downhill any more, but it was a gentle traverse through the forest, so we could kick and glide without our skins. The sun was getting lower in the horizon, it was perfectly quiet, and the air was warm and still as we slid through the trees.  Eventually we spotted the towers for the gondola in the distance, and new we were getting close.  

After a few more minutes, the slope suddenly got steeper, and moments later we skied right out into the parking lot of the ski area.  It was 4:20 (dude!)  and we had been on the go pretty much non stop since 9:30.  We were tired, yet very satisfied with a day well spent in the mountains.