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posted: March 31st, 2010 |
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This page continues with the morning of March 14th and takes you through late morning of the same day - some incredible snow scenery at Tsugaike Kogen in the Hakuba Area of Nagano Prefecture. Click on any thumbnail to begin.
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| March 14th Continues From Page 1 (at 9:59 AM) |
Okay, it's now 9:59 AM and we are in the clouds up here at this level of the mountain. This is far from the summit, we are at about 1,850 meters (6,070 feet) - I don't know the elevation of the highest summit around here - this is a plateau on the mountain. We are hoping with all of our might that the weather will clear up! In the first photo you can see people in front of us on the packed trail with snowboards and snowshoes. In the 2nd photo - it's a moment of nearly clear sky - oh heavens it's amazingly beautiful. In the 3rd shot it's back to being cloudy.
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Here is me, just below the Tsugaike Hutte in the first photo. It's now 10:10 AM. Still hoping for more clear sky. In the 2nd photo it's 10:22 AM and another moment of clear sky passes by. In the 3rd photo it's 10:23 AM and we are still keeping our fingers crossed that it will clear up even more than it has so far.
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Now it's looking like it will most likely clear up. The first photo was taken at 10:27 AM. The 2nd photo was at 10:28 AM, more clear sky, but still not 100% clear. The 3rd photo was 10:30 AM and another cloud rolls by and makes us wonder if this is the way it's going to be for our entire time up here.
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OH YES! Look at that! Amazing! All of the photos in this row were taken between 10:30 and 10:31 AM. We are hiking on a trail which a few people have snow-shoed on, so we are not having too much trouble staying on top of the snow. We cannot leave this packed trail though or we sink in up to our thighs.
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The photos in this row were taken between 10:32 and 10:35 AM - we were just going crazy snapping photos. We didn't know how long it would stay clear. This was just such incredibly gorgeous scenery that we couldn't snap our shutters quickly enough.
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These 3 photos were taken between 10:36 and 10:42 AM. The center photo is me and you can see the trail we are walking on. We are wishing that we had snowshoes today - but we don't so we have to make out as best we can. They are NOT inexpensive to rent, so we didn't want to rent them twice.
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All three of these photos were taken at 10:45 AM. The first photo is looking back towards the Tsugaike Hutte area - you can see how far we have managed to come - without snowshoes. We have such amazing scenery on all sides of us that we still can't stop taking photos. We zoom in a little and zoom out a little and keep taking photos of the same thing without realizing that it's the same photo we have already taken. The sky is so amazingly blue. I can recall taking photos like this with a film camera and being able to obtain this kind of blue only by using a Polarizing Filter. Here we are using no filters at all though.
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These 3 shots were taken between 10:45 and 10:48 AM. In all 3 photos you can see that the wind is blowing pretty hard. There were gusts here on the plateau too and one gust was so strong it knocked me over. Our tracks disappeared in about 15 seconds. It was now getting difficult to follow that snowshoe trail and we were just about ready to turn back.
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These 3 shots were taken between 10:50 and 11:10 AM as we hiked back towards the Tsugaike Hutte. You can't appreciate how strong the wind is blowing, but we certainly did! It was sunny and bright, but the wind was extremely cold.
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Now it's around 11:10 AM and we are back on hard packed trail near the Tsugaike Hutte. The 3rd shot gives you an idea of how much we sunk in where the snow was not well packed. This was WORK!
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This row was shot between 11:14 and 11:20 AM as we hiked back towards the Gondola Lift to head down. We had to return home today and that meant we had to take a bus to the train station at about 12:20 PM. Time to start hurrying a little bit.
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This final row on this page does NOT mark the end of March 14th. This row ends at 11:21 AM. There are 10 more shots of this incredible adventure on the next page.
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| End Page 2, but March 14th STILL continues on Page 3. |
| Thanks so much for taking the time to look at this page. Now, please go on to Page 3 for the continuation of this day's adventures - starting at 11:25 AM. |
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