Looking across to Mt. Goryu (2,814m or 9,232 ft) from Mt Sobatsubu in the Japan Alps . I was recently passing though Tokyo and ducked out to the alps on the bullet train to catch up with a very old friend of mine from my rock climbing days. He now runs the beautiful White Silver Hakuba lodge with his wife. It’s an epic base to hit up the nine ski resorts in the valley. The Hakuba area receives over 10 meters of snow per year with 135 lifts accessing over 200 runs and a heap of backcountry. Japan is one of the most mountainous countries in the world with ~73% of its total land mass covered by mountains (a comparable level to Norway). Hakuba, Honshu, Japan