Today was an off day. By off day I meant we weren’t skiing nose deep snow. Motivation seemed to be lacking today. And by lacking I mean Caleb took a nap in the van while we went skiing for a couple hours.

Furano ski area is the steepest terrain we have seen since arriving in Japan, but the best stuff is closed. General consensus at the end of the day is that a bit of tree glading and dropping a few more ropes and this area would be a skiing Mecca. As it is, they are pretty good at trying to scare you away from their backcountry. We ended up ducking a rope or two and skiing some really fun stuff, and general idea is that the ski patrol doesn’t even bat an eye around here. In fact in most of our resort experience around here it seems as though ski patrol barely exists.

A couple bad cases of shin bang and need for a rest day send us down the road to an Onsen (hot springs) where we scope out our most likely agenda for tomorrow, Tokachidake.

Worth mentioning at this point is that we have done this trip in more or less dirtbag style. We haven’t paid for a hotel room yet, and have slept in our van more nights than not. More money for sushi and ramen I suppose. Tomorrow we add Jennie Wray to our crew. I’m not entirely sure she will approve of how our van smells. Oh well. That’s what you get when you join a dudes trip halfway through….

Hopefully back to this soon.

We are headed to Tokachidake and then Sapporo today….