Points on the map » Snowshoeing

Snow, snow & more snow

Matt — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:33:40 +0000

I chose a differrent area of the French Alps this year for my snowshoeing trip. The Ecrins is a national park west of the Vanoise, about 2 hours south of Grenoble.

I flew from London to Lyon, only Diego didn’t make the flight. He ended up flying to Geneva, so I drove the rental car from Lyon and met him there. Luckily this gave me time to go and visit Chris, Junko, and the twins…

Chris, Diego, and I were together the next day, staying in the very friendly Gite l’Aventure in the small village of Pisancon. Our host, Fabien, cooked wonderful meals each evening, and, helped by Angele. We were not alone in the gite; there was a very lively group of sixty-something friends, who took to singing loud soungs each evening over dinner.

The weather was tricky. We had rain near the gite, but heavy snow at higher altitude.

Weekend in Yamagata

Matt — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 10:41:26 +0000

Our weekend in Yamagata was a great success. Kanako, Yukiko, Isabelle, Arika and Renald joined me for 3 days of snowshoeing. We drove up on Friday night, arriving just before 2 am. Okuyama-san roused us early next morning for hot breakfast, and we then set off for our first snowshoe adventure.

Coming down steep slope Kanako lost one of her gloves, even though we all spent a good long time looking for it!

In the evening back at the lodge, Kanako and Yukiko made themselves comfortable…

The next day we did a long snowshoe hike, right up towards Gassan. The weather was brilliant, and the snow very white, so Renald and I got quite a tan.

To see all the photos, use this link:
http://www.malcomson.com/gallery/yamagatamar2005

GPS tracks of the hikes can be downloaded from here:
Gassan snowshoe GPX file
Gassan snowshoe Mapsource GDB file

Last hurrah in Yamagata

Matt — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 10:00:39 +0000

My last IAC trip before I leave Japan will be to Yamagata, in the north-east of Japan. We are staying at Pole Pole, deep in the mountains near the Japan Sea coast. We went there in December for the New Year holiday, and had a wonderful time.

Photos from December.

Yatsugatake snowshoeing

Matt — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 10:00:35 +0000

I took Bill and four friends to Yatsugatake for snowshoeing during his visit.

We stayed at the “Owl” lodge, “Fukuro-no-yado”、and spent two days snowshoeing up high on the top of Yatsugatake.

Route:
From the top of Piratasu ropeway we hiked north over Yoko-dake and down through a forested slope without any tracks to a small frozen lake. We kept heading north with Tateshina-dake in front of us, until we found a trail going west. This took us slowly down along a narrow river valley to the road, where Bill met us.

Mapquest map

GPS tracks and waypoints:
Mapsource GDB file
GPX file

Meakan-dake

Matt — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 09:48:10 +0000

Meakan-dake is a mountain in Eastern Hokkaido. We went by snowshoe from the car park at the hot spring and headed straight to the top. However, the last part near the top on the northern side is too steep for snowshoes, so we went around to the south, and then climbed from there. There is a fabulou 360 degrees panorama from the top.
On the way down, we took too long in the deep snow, so it was dark when we got to the lake. Stay on the path on the northern side of this lake.

Photos of our trip.

GPS tracks:
Mapsource GDB file
GPX file