Hiking mountain in winter time

The end of February could be said as the time of the heaviest snow in around Tsuruoka. But I am feeling good, because in this very heavy snow, I had such a great experience. On Feb 19th – 22nd I joined winter school program in Yamagata University Research Forest. The participant of that program were from some countries, like Germany, Japan, and Indonesia. That was very great and nice experience for me. In that program, we were hiking the mountain in a very thick layer of snow. That was my first time of doing that kind of activity. I even can’t believe that I did that!

Basically, the main project of that program is about forest ecology that related to the climate (especially snow effect on plant forest). All the participants were divided into 4 groups. There, each group was digging the snow in some stop site which already decided. Every stop site could reach until 2 – 4 meters depth. The aims of digging the snow is to know the snow profile. We also took some samples of snow to analyze the weight, temperature, and the snow chemistry like the pH and electro conductivity. After that we discussed about the result we got.

Not only that, there was also some amazing things. Because my group was digging on the top of the mountain, we down the mountain by surfing down. And that was very fun and great. Then we had snow ball fight activity. That was also my first time of playing game with snow! In the end, we made Yukidaruma hehe. What a great one!

And the most important thing is I really had a chance to talk with other people from other countries (Germany and Japanese), we shared information each other. I really got double even triple advantages from this activity :)