This last weekend I went with a group of co-workers to Hakuba. Hakuba is an hour and a half outside of Nagano Japan in the Japanese Alps. We left rainy Yokohama on Friday after school and took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagano. We spent the night in Nagano near the station and headed out early the next morning for Hakuba. Once we were in Hakuba we checked into the hotel and set out on our first adventure. We headed out from the hotel to Iwatake Ski Resort. The trail was well marked as many snowshoers had been there before us. We hiked around and had a snack break of hot coco and maple cookies. After that we continued our trek through the snow covered wilderness. We stumbled across some interesting tracks in the snow... The two ladies I was with were convinced that it was a bear... I voted rabbit... they asked the patrol guy once we got back, and he confirmed my rabbit vote. While we were hiking the clouds lifted a bit and gave us an amazing view of the valley bellow.
After our hike we asked another person skiing by and asked her to take our picture. One of the ladies we were with tripped over her snowshoes and fell, and the lady taking our picture was awesome and kept on taking pictures. It made my day. After our hike we ate lunch at the ski resort at the top of the hill and then rode the gondola back down the hill. After we got back to town we found a lovely coffee shop and had coffee and played cards for a bit until everyone else was done skiing. While we were walking around we saw a bunch of people with snowshoes walking around, so we asked where they had gone. They were very nice and gave us a map and verbal directions on how to get to the start of the trek. So we were very excited to have a plan for the next day. 
The next day we took the Tsugike Kogen Gondola to the start of the trail at about 5,200 feet. Basically we were traversing up an old ski route. The upper lifts are shut down for some reason. The traverse was relatively simple but took us a while. It was a beautiful day with blue skies, which really made the mountains stand out. By the end of the hike I was down to a t-shirt and my snow pants. I also got a pretty awesome sunburn. Near the top of our hike the area is normally a marsh land so there are relatively few trees. But it made for great hiking and great pictures. From the start of the hike to the top of the hill took us about 3 hours and we climbed 1,112 feet. 
We ended up at the summit of out little hill (6,289 ft) with great views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. We hung out near the top for a while and ate onigiri (rice balls) for lunch and had tea. Once we ate lunch we made our way down the hill and back to the gondola. It only took us about one hour to make it down the hill, mainly due to some creative trail making down the hill. I had a really cool app running on my phone the whole time which tracked our hike. Overall it was a great trip, it's always great to get outside and play in the snow.
Here is a link to my Trail Map I created.
