It is a wet and rainy morning in Yuzawa with temperatures around +6 degrees at 8:30am, though the forecast currently is just cloud for the day apart from rain for a short time this afternoon so it may well clear up. After today we seem to have a number of days of cloud or sun lined up.

From today, the resorts remaining open are Gala Yuzawa, Naeba and Kagura.

Nighta has now finished at the Naeba resort, and during the daytime at Naeba the following lifts are now ope - Dragondola, Prince Number 1 Gondola, Quad lifts number 3 and 5.

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Today, we have a first hand report from the Kagura resort. Tsondaboy went up there to get some snow depth measurements and he gave us the following information.

"The snow depths I measured were exactly next to the slopes were the groomer hasn’t passed as it's impossible to stick the probe in a groomed area. The official snow depth at the resort was 280cm on this day. As you can see (in the photos in the YuzawaNow gallery, below) the numbers we found were less than that and you can expect the snow depth on the groomers to be 50-80 cm less than in the undisturbed areas.

Tashiro is hurting. Patches of dirt are coming out at the lower parts near the lake. It seems that they are moving snow from the trees and grooming it onto the slopes.... I don't believe that they will be able to keep Tashiro runing for more than 2-3 more weeks.

I didn't take any measurements in the Mitsumata area, but it looked more or less like Tashiro - maybe just slightly better.

The Kagura slopes are still ok and should not have problems operating until the end of next month.

The temperature was about 8 deg. There was a slight dusting of snow falling at the top of the number 1 high speed lift at around 14:00.

Of course the snow conditions were as expected - bulletproof at north facing slopes and slush on most of the other areas. Still there was enough snow to make for a good spring riding. If you do go up there though make sure to wax your board or skis - sticky sticky!"

Thanks to tsondaboy for the report.