Spring days at Teine

Sapporo Teine. April 13th

Although the season is winding down and the deep powder days of winter are long gone, a few hills in Hokkaido remain open. Sapporo Teine is open at weekends all the way until early May, and Nakayama Touge’s lift will keep turning as long as there’s snow, sometimes into June!

We had a great day at Teine at the weekend. The snow wasn’t amazing, but for this far into April, we weren’t complaining, especially as the sun was shining and the views were fantastic.

View of Mount Yotei, or Ezo Fuji, from the top of Teine 

We went to check out the bowls, and although there wasn’t powder, the snow was nice spring corn which is a good second best. We weren’t hitting anything crazy, but just riding around and having fun. Once the sun hit the ‘Nature Zone’ it softened up nicely and we spend a good couple of hours lapping the Panorama lift getting some photos and working on the goggle tans.

Mike scoring a new Facebook profile picture

Mt Muine. We hiked this in the autumn. It holds snow well into the summer, so its a target for a spring ski tour.

Spring snow in the bowls

Looking down the Summit Express chair and over the coast to Shokanbetsudake in the distance

With Dan and Mike. Photo thanks to a guy from Tokyo who had hiked from the valley up the summer hiking trail that runs up the backside of the mountain.

Last run of the day through Shangri La in the late afternoon sunlight

The snowpack up in the hills is still very deep so will stick around for a long while, despite the warm spring sunshine that we’re having. We’ll still be riding for a good few weeks to come before we put our skis and boards away! An added bonus from this weekend was the bike ride we squeezed in on Saturday. It was one of those awesome Hokkaido weekends when ski season and cycling season overlap!