It's a sort-of-powder-day! Hey, not bad for December. It was snowing quite a bit on the mountain the day before, so I was getting excited about getting out early to the lifts. 

All my training getting up early at 5am for early morning meetings this year is now paying dividends. Getting to first lifts is easy for me. I went out as early as I could, though I didn't manage to get the first ropeway up. A lot of people showed up ahead of me on the way to the ropeway. The mountain ended up not getting too much new snow overnight though.

A few areas were still closed off, including what I considered the best area in Kagura, the Kagura Lift 5 that only opens for half a day, on a good day. On windy days they don't even bother. Neither for early season like today. This area is where you can drop through the trees into a huge open bowl that lands you back somewhere within the resort. Alas, it is not running.

Instead, I used the opportunity to try to ride the whole mountain. Even though I've been to Kagura a few times, I never managed to ride all the way across from end-to-end. After what seemed like a never ending series of lifts, I managed to get all the way to the far end of Tashiro. At this end there is a dramatically named Dragondola, a gondola that connects Kagura to Naeba. I was disappointed the gondolas were not shaped like a dragon.

On the Tashiro side, there were a few powder stashes and we rode around as a large group through the trees, destroying any smooth untouched powder we could find. I'd rate that a powder-ish day.

One of these are my lines: