The weather was looking great so we set off for a little snowshoeing adventure. We started off the day in Aomori and then headed to the Hakkoda Mountains. Our plan was to take the rope way to the top of the mountains and snowshoe to see the "snow monsters" (evergreen trees that get COMPLETELY coated in snow/ice). Plans changed a bit once we reached the base of the rope way and it was snowing pretty hard. Didn't feel like a good idea for rookie snowshoers to go up to the top of a mountain in a blizzard...
No one knows for sure how much snow the Hakkoda Mountains get each year but estimates I've found range from 14-20 meters...ummm that's crazy...46-66 feet!
A very short, interesting read published last week: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/13/the-snowiest-place-on-ear_n_4776260.html
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| See anything unusual about this picture?? Hint: It's in Japan not USA! |
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| Cute hedgehogs at a bakery! |
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| And whatever these are supposed to be... |
This is a great mystery to us...a parking garage. You park just inside the garage door, they put a sensor thing on the car, you get out and lock the doors. Then the car disappears to somewhere. When you are ready to leave you give the attendant your receipt, they push some buttons and a couple minutes later the car shows back up ready to go. But where do they go? How do they get parked with out a driver???
These are pictures of our drive from Aomori through the mountains. Absolutely AMAZING! The snow was so beautiful and insanely deep! Glad we didn't meet many other cars, it was pretty much one lane, icy in places, but I don't think we were gonna go far if we hit the snow wall!
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| Base of the Hakkoda rope way. |
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| Also at the base of the Hakkoda rope way and ski area. Holy snow!!! |
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| I think this business closes for the winter... |
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| Love how it's not that windy most of the time and snow can sit on the branches! |
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| Random group we encountered... |
Our backup plan brought us to Tsuta Swamp Nature Trail. A pretty good place to snowshoe for beginners. There is a good trail to follow out to the big pond, from there we went off the trail and wandered through the forest! Perfect day for it!
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| Somebody caught their snowshoe on a tree branch! |
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| Is that a yeti? |
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| Our route for the day. |
A week after our snowshoeing adventure the weather was great (temps in upper 30's and 40's) and a majority of the snow melted. As of February 25th we'd gotten a season total of 128.7 inches of snow, 29 inches above the average for the season! Coming up for March the average high temperature will be 42 degrees with average low of 30 degrees. Average March snowfall is 20.6 inches with the record being 57.8 inches. Looks like we've almost made it through our first winter in Misawa!
A few pictures from a random walk on the beach. Was super windy that day, most of the times I'm at this beach the water is calm!
Up next: A trip HOME! (And Tokyo cherry blossoms!)
Japan is the snowiest place on Earth. It’s also one of the most fun places to visit on Earth. We know for certain that Hakuba, Japan saw 600″ (15.24 Meters) of snow in town in only 10 weeks in 2015. We can’t even begin to image how much fell 6,000 feet above town in the high mountains…
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