Mount Asama is the most active volcano on Honshu, the main island of Japan. It commands the skyline around Komoro and Karuizawa and stands at 2568m. It is also featured on the 100 famous mountains of Japan making it a common summer hiking destination.
Being the tallest mountain in the area and being positioned to the east of main alps, it doesn’t receive as much snow and what it does receive is heavily scoured by the wind. Whole sides of the mountain exposed to the south and west have almost zero snow having been blown away by the extreme winds that the area receives and the remaining snow being melted away by the sun warming the exposed rock. The volcano also has a continual plume of gas being emitted from the crater.
The skiing down was not great skiing, but I can imagine that rare non-windy storm would produce magical knee deep powder down mellow alpine slopes for more than 1000m. It could be awesome. But it wasn’t today.
