Not too many activities happening this morning. Our ski luggage didn’t arrive yet from Beijing, so we instead had most of the morning off. This turned out to be a nice relaxing time, and get a bit more used to the new location. As soon as lunch finished though, our luggage arrived absolutely freezing from the drive. After letting our gear warm-up for an hour, we went out to the mountain to finish up the day. 

While going up the lift for our first run, I found out that the name of this place, Changbaishan directly translates to Long White Mountain. With that in mind, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, with early season conditions the biggest and most normal expectation is ice. Although there was still plenty of that, my first real impression of this mountain reminded me much more of some places I’ve skied on the East Coast of the US. Not only did some of the trees and slope feel similar, but the architecture looks completely Western as well. After taking a few laps I, along with the kids, were all really happy to be back on snow. It was rough going from skiing in New Zealand for so long and then having the last month and a half off-snow in Beijing. The amount of time I’ve spent off snow in the past year still blows my mind. Looking forward to plenty of more skiing this week.