About Sam Baldwin, SnowSphere.com

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For Fukui’s Sake: Two Years in Rural Japan – Creatures of the Kuzuryu

(This is a chapter extract from “For Fukui’s Sake” – published with the author’s permission.)

High up in the mountain folds above Ono, there sits a lonely lake. Clear, blue-green and contained by steep, forested slopes, it was one of … Continue reading →

Snowshoes and Snowboards: A Backcountry Boarding Adventure in the Scottish Highlands

It was an unseasonably warm February morning when I set off with Jamie, fellow snow-hunter, in search of a mountain that still had a reasonable covering of the white stuff. Just a couple of months earlier, there had been so much snow that I had snowshoed around central Edinburgh, but since then, warmer weather had descended upon Scotland, and the snowline had rapidly retreated back up the mountains.

Shadows of a Snowshoer: Exploring Edinburgh’s Arctic Hinterland

It's November 2010 and Britain is getting buried.

News reports are saying it's the “worst winter since 1981.” In the UK, snow of this volume is rare, and this early in the year it's unknown. For so many people here, snow is just another form of weather to grumble about. When it comes to the white stuff, we don't cope well. Airports and schools are shut, trains have stopped running and the road network is paralysed. People have been stranded in their cars overnight, pipes are frozen and councils have run out of grit.

Snowshoes and Sushi – Roaming the Rice Paddies of Japan

The land of sushi and sumo is not the first place that comes to mind when you think of snow, yet this mountainous Asian country gets buried in the white stuff every year. Last winter (05/06) saw record breaking snow storms in west Japan, unknown for 25 years, derailing trains and delaying planes, but putting a big smile on the faces of winter sports fans across the nation.