Comments about the season 2004-2005

What particular for this winter was that there was enormous snow. In northern Sapporo, the snow height reached about 140cm. In Akaigawa where we train often, the snow height reached 220cm. It snowed constantly and didn't cease even in the late winter. As we need snow to train, this winter was very nice although some roads which are normally snowploughed were not snowploughed because of lack of the snowploughing budget as it had snowed unexpectedly too much. As it has snowed constantly, the road condition was very good and we could train with studded tires until the middle March. In a normal year, it difficult to train with studded tires even at the beginning of March. However, it snowed sometimes too much that we had difficulty to distinguish the road. We experienced the phenomenon of whiteout much more times than a usual year.