Greenland is Open!
A terrain park and a theme park. Greenland has everything!
Iwamizawa Greenland (also sometimes called White Park) is one of the dozens of local ski hills to be found all over Hokkaido. Almost every larger town has a hill with one or two lifts, cheap or free lift tickets and usually night skiing. Iwamizawa actually has two ski hills, the other being Haginoyama, whose claim to fame is that it’s ‘Japan’s widest ski hill.’
Greenland is by far my favourite local hill. It has a nice steep slope, a decent park, no crowds and being in Iwamizawa it gets a ton of snow.
The view from Greenland towards Sapporo and the sea in the distance
The glow of the floodlights a couple of nights ago alerted me to the fact that Greenland has now opened for the season. Normally I’d be there after work, lapping the kickers and getting the odd powder run between the trees.
Getting faceshots after work
Sliding sideways
Not the case this winter though. My hand is still pretty well bandaged up, with four pins supporting my broken matacarpal, so skiing is still off the cards until January. Reports of deep powder from friends hitting various ski hills last weekend were tough to hear! The doc says my op went well though and so far things are healing up nicely. I’m itching to get skiing again!
Latest X Ray!
Crap. Injured already.
Broken 4th metacarpal
Not the way I’d planned to start the season. Turned out that ‘sprained’ hand from last weekend is actually broken. I’m going back to the doctor next week and they’ll pin the bone together. I won’t be skiing the weekend immediately after that, and then I’m heading to the UK for Christmas and New Year. So it looks like my season is on hold until early January. Bugger.
4 ski days so far. I’ll have some catching up to do.
Ezo Pow 