Not all wet dreams are good dreams.
A lot inspired the namesake of this saga. Constantly dreaming about getting to ski these towering mountains played a factor, however it wasn’t until a deluge of rain for two consecutive weeks that the literal sense of being in a wet dream set in.
Like most wet dreams, things got weird. When not used to the confines and time constraints that come with what most consider normality, there’s only so much down time one can tolerate before feeling a little unbalanced. Thankfully, before the Gary Busey level of sanity set in, the promise of fair weather returned.
Tateyama is one of the many places down range we’d gazed upon, but had never been around late enough to visit when open. We opted for a long high pressure period that was interrupted by foul weather for only 20 hours. In theory, it sounded great. A few days of hard skiing, a day of rest, followed by a handful more big days skiing until food and motivation were consumed. Things started well enough with powder skiing and making turns on everything we could see from camp, which was a lot.
Then the expected weather came. Early. With rain. A lot more than forecasted. Puddles turned to ponds, daydreams to wet dreams, tents from leaking to collapsing. It was the worst night any of us had ever spent in a tent. The next morning, a break in the rain allowed us to take stock of what wasn’t soaked. There wasn’t much left dry. Our faces hurt from getting slapped in the face by the shaking tent walls. The tents were higher than the surrounding ground, and the Mongolian monsoon was only half way through. Dreams had turned to nightmares. We wrung out what we could and stuffed it into our backpacks. Tails between our legs, we limped down from Tateyama to lick our wounds and dry gear. Don’t trifle with bad weather in Japan.
