Did you give any thought to buying+selling vs renting the car?

Did you not freeze in the car sleeping at night ? And how come the car hire was that expensive ? Is it because you did a ton of km's on it or just general car hire costs a lot there ?

buy vs rent wasnt close.
buying is almost impossible for non resident. even for my friend with japanese gf it was a huge pain.
even if i could, the effort to buy and then resell would be a headache without being able to speak japanese. plus id be driving a crappier car vs a new rental.
theyre expensive to rent because insurance is included.
had unlimited mileage.

only cold once when it was -26c.
have a -25c down bag with silk liner + heavy duty down mat.
used heater before bed and in mornings.

grand massif confirmed best french resort!

Kaby, what makes it good?

Flaine in particular (part of grand massif) is usually in the top 3 for snowfall every year in France and grand-massif has quite a few good off-piste possibilities. Having that said I wouldn't go as far as calling it the best french resort hehe.

Interesting stuff. If you were to do another season in Japan, would you do anything differently aside from riding less resorts and no season ticket? Did you like the car experience? Would you do it again?

the plan for next time would be honshu, more touring, and more time since its far bigger.
yes i absolutely loved the cardanchi experience, its the best way to do japan imo if you're a serious shredder. i would not do japan again any other way.
watch the cardanchi series for inspiration as i did, it lived up to every expectation i had of it.

I want to go skiing again but work is being a pain. I don't like grown up life...

winnercircle,

Mainly the off piste. Just so much cool lift-accessible stuff to do. Multiple natural half pipes & glades.

In addition to that, the runs themselves are fun and have a lot of variety.



Suggestions for better ones? My sample size is only 6 or so

Where have you been so far? Are you judging purely off-piste terrain or other factors like weather, village, lift system?

I find it really hard to judge what's the best. For example Morzine is immense and much better than most resorts if there's decent snow cover but it's quite low and so the snow can melt fast.

if the snow sux, who cares about the acreage. its there for marketing purposes for punters.
many of the best resort days ive had were in resorts with less than 3 lifts.

HD and enjoy From our trip to Whiteface Mountain.

Thanks for the vid pfc. Looks like you guys had a good trip. How did you like Whiteface? Were you there on a weekend? Was it crowded with long lift lines or not too bad?

We were there in 3rd weekend of February. Friday - Monday. Only skied for 2 days and like it a lot. I'm sure there is a good reason why it's called Iceface, however there was not much ice when we were there.

Base lift and Gondola have about 10 min wait at least, it was really crowded. However mid-top of the mountain wait is much less.

Portes du soleil is usually good in January-February and gets good snowfall most of the time. There's usually not much snow or good snow quality at other times though so unless you like riding park, I wouldn't suggest going at other times of the year (unless it's a particularly good season). Avoriaz especially has a lot of good spots which are almost untracked but are accessible with a tiny bit of walking which puts a lot of people off. I went this year and found like 5 untracked runs that were all <5-10min walk. Also for some reason everyone wakes up late even when it snows a lot during the night so the first 2 hours you can get good runs.

La clusaz is really good for off-piste when it snows well. Tons of easily accessible yet somewhat hidden spots which allow untracked or almost untracked runs. Again max altitude is about 2.4k or so (then again that's a problem for most french resorts, except 3 valleys, les 2 alpes and tignes).

I haven't been in les 2 alpes and tignes in the winter but they both have a lot of coverage and are quite high (3.x km) and have friends riding winters there and say it's good.

I don't go to the southern french alps a lot but definitely look into it since they are kind of on/off. You either get tons of fresh snow or very little snow, but when they get a lot, they really do get a lot, and they are also less crowded (limited experience).

If you're into park, then portes du soleil, les 2 alpes, 3 valleys are all good.

The main thing about french alps is that a lot of the resorts usually have decent powder spots but the problem is that unless it's a good season, it doesn't snow that much and you get these random temperature spikes where it's really warm for a week and the snow turns to **** and melts really quickly (like this week, +15c at 600m, was +7 at 1800 the other day)

Although it's more expensive and it's switzerland, zermatt and verbier have very good off-piste spots and have tons of beginners so the off-piste isn't as crowded as other places. They're also both 3.x km so snow is a bit better. Be careful if you're gonna go to hidden/untracked spots without a guide though (duh), a few of my friends have had close calls in verbier at spots that initially looked OK.

Switzerland requires a bank loan to afford the holiday/

my mistake on predicting this years winter in japan.
its been a funny winter.
60cm dump in rusutsu today and plenty more coming.

Confirmed hitting Rusutsu on the 12th, staying til Saturday. Very excited

excited for you potato. the 13th looks like another 50+cm day easy.
maybe you can back up what i've been saying all these years.

Nice video, I'll probably go upstate for a Whiteface weekend later this month.

Lake Placid is the best place on Earth imo . . . I hike Devil's Path a lot.

Will report back for sure.

Bummed I forgot my gopro back in the states. But I'm gonna rent kit while I'm there so maybe they don't want me sticking those mounts all over their gear.

are these conditions considered good for the east coast?
thats totally not worth riding if in japan

good effort on the edit though and looks like you guys had tons of fun.