Hakuba was our first stop, a shuttle bus straight from the airport gets you there directly with a minimum amount of fuss and route findig.. The boys arrived in Narita and we touched down in Haneda, by the afternoon we had all settled in nicely in our alpine chalet in the Hakuba valley. Our place of choice was the amazing Hakuba Happo Log Chalets, which is convenierntly located between the main train/bus terminal and the main ski field Happo One. The chalet is also sandwiched between two hotsprings so we usually headed straight to one of them with our full ski geat - no problem. Shopping is easy with a supermarket and a convenient store nearby. The walk from the chalet to skifield was about 20 minutes which provided a good warm-up for our legs and we ended up just walking every day.
We only had four days so there was no need to take a rest day, just take the gondola (Adam) up to the top of the mountain every morning and ski the whole day. When you can't move anymore just relocate to Tokyo - simple - kind of! Well, like all great plans they sometimes don't work out.
We hired all our geat from Spicy Rental, which is the Japanese equivalent to Rhthym Sports and one of the main chains throughout Japan. Our host called them up and arranged pick up from our location, we picked up the gear and they drove us back home. We also got 20% discount because the Chalet had a deal with Spicy so make sure you ask them for the discount. The Service was amazing and we just the gear at the Chalet no need to drop it back again.
Tickets are much easier and completely hassle free: just rock up in the morning and buy your ticket at the base of the Gondola. I single day will cost you 7200 Yen and it gets cheaper if you buy 2 or 3 days. You can also by half day and mountain bases that cover multible resorts. Check here for ticket info: HAPPO ONE. Buying your ticket online is even cheaper but you never know the weather so its easy to just turn up in the morning and sort is out for the day.
Day 1 and 2 went smooth and the boys found their ski legs pretty quick. It was fun to rediscover the terrain and explore the multitude of trails down the mountain. We disovered several links that we liked and linked the entire mountain from top to bottom giving you about one hour of downhill.
Day 3 saw torrential rain coming down in the valley and it was hard to make a decision to get out of the cozy warm mountain chalet, let alone go skiing ? But we went anyway - hoping for a miracle. And it came, once we hoped on the Gondola we magically bunched through the rain clouds and above the skies were clear with good conditions. So we skied the whole day and returned back into the torrential rain down in the valley late in the afternoon. A magic day but it would be our undoing later on in the game. Completely soaked to the bone, we went - were else but a steaming hot spring to soothe our aching bodies. This was an old favourite at the Momonoki hotel, which comes with its own dedicated hot spring. That day the snow monkeys paid us a visit in the hot spring which was a sublime experience.
Day 4: One more day to go and we were ready for it. That night the temperature plummeted to well below freezing and since it had rainded all day, the lower slopes turned into one huge sheet of ice. Then the snow started to fall and did not stop all night, so by the time we got up we had half a meter of fresh powder on top of a hidden ice-sheet. It was the most trecherous conditions I have ever seen. You were mostly in powder, but after a few turns the ice would catch you off guard. Since it was our last day we were keen to go hard. The snowboard jumps started early and the fatigue on day 4 was taking its toll. After a couple of hard falls on ice my body was having a word with me and I slowed down a fair bit - bruised and battered. But the twins didn't. Before long the jumps were getting bigger and the landings more dangerous, you can see were this is going right?
After lunch, I saw Roman take air - higher than usual but the rotation was wrong and he could not land on his feet, instead his arm tried to brake the impact. It buckled immediately and went limb. Roman tried to stand up on it not feeling anything and trying to walk away from it all but it was game over. We didn't realise what he had done and there was no immediate pain - just shock and adrenaline perhaps. Before long the pain returned with a vengence and the realisation set in. At first we didn't know how bad it was so there was a sick feeling amongst all of us. It was bad but how bad? We called the local rescue squad, who were there within minutes - again excellent service - they were used to it. Pain was increasing rapidly now and I ask them for the "Green Whistle" but this is Japan and they were carrying nothing for pain, which was a bit of a shock. One of the medic tried to splint the arm but it caused too much pain and Roman decided to self manage instead. They ramped him into one of the stretchers and skied him down the mountain like a body bag! The taxi was waiting for us and drove us to the Hakuba International hospital which is very close to the skifield - no suprises there.
We were lucky and it was not busy so Roman got in straight away. While I filled out forms the doctor pushed both his ulna and radial bone back into his elbow socket. The verdict was Posterior elbow dislocation (PED) occurs when the radius and ulna are forcefully driven posteriorly to the humerus. Our doctor was young and had a good sense of humor, he was also brutal and managed to wrench the bones back into place within a few minutes. We dodged a huge bullet, there was minimal ligament damage, no protusion and pain went away pretty much straight away. The bill was $1500 and the whole ordeal took about 90 minutes and we were home for dinner and a hot bath to soothe the bruising. It was our last day skiing (Chris kept going for the whole day with a little more care.) and we moved to Tokyo the next morning. Almost perfect timing ...... |
