A Winter on the Road – Part 2
Posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008
February – Hokkaido Powder
February. Usually a month of epic powder in the Alps, but it can just as easily go the other way, which it did. Fortunately, I had an assignment and a plane ticket from Geneva to Sapporo. The north island of Japan, Hokkaido, is known as a powder skiing Mecca. Featured in dozens of ski porn films, the Japan segments are always the deepest and often the most exotic. Sushi, hot springs, and neck-deep pow. What else can go right?
My travel partner, girlfriend, and Rossi tele-teamer Susanna Magruder and I loaded our well-worn fleet of Da Kine wheelie bags – seriously, where would we be without them? – making the train, plane, and automo-bus hop to Tokyo, then Sapporo. Landing in Hokkaido’s capital city was like transporting yourself to a city the size of Boston with a meter of snow on the ground. Except in Sapporo, they know how to deal with it. And do all winter long. The entire city has a sub-street labyrinth of walkways, almost like an underground mall that people use during the winter, explaining how the countless women in miniskirts and spiked-heel boots could negotiate the city.
After a night at the Sapporo Snow festival, a few Izakaya bars, and a guided tour of the Nijo fishmarket, we headed to the mountains.
Our first stop was Furano, where off-piste skiing is strictly prohibited. Oddly, it hadn’t snowed in a week, and the only powder we were going to find was in the forbidden zone. The immediate dilemma of wanting to respect the hospitality of the resort (having vip ski passes, hotels, etc.) and needing to get into that legendary Japanese powder had only one answer: Swift, Silent, Deep. Susanna had the perfect Hokkaido poaching camouflage outfit, while my tarmac RPK suit did the job just fine. We managed to get away with 2 days of sneaky off-piste skiing and decided to keep moving to where the snow was about to hit.
“Asahidake. That’s the best place in Japan,” Candide Thovex told me last year. He was dead-on. A volcano in the middle of Daisetsuzan National Park with a 100-man tram, no patrol, and no piste. Now we’re talking. We were shacked up in the opulent onsen (natural hot spring) La Vista resort; kind of like The Shining hotel, but really nice. Day one was just clear enough to see the top of the cone, and the steam vents that billowed sulfurous gas before the onslaught began. A meter of Hokkaido cold smoke the next day, and another meter the next. By the end of day two, there were only four of us on the tram, including the driver, who played Marley and Little Feat on the stereo.
We’ve all had runs that were over-the-head, for 5, 10 turns. I mean truly Over. The. Head. But we were literally struggling to breathe for hundreds of meters at a time. Shroder Baker, a legendary powder skier in his own right, introduced me to the term “forking”, where the snow forks around your head. At times, I wished that forking was even an option. You’re never going to hear me use the term “too deep”, but no shit, I would watch Susanna drop the knee and submarine, actually disappearing altogether.
Back at the hotel, we would change into the provided kung-fu pajamas, hit the hot springs for an hour, and melt into the 10-course dinner. “What the hell is that?” asked Susanna. “Chicken Sashimi?” Yep, we tried it and didn’t get sick, and it definitely wouldn’t be the strangest thing we ate.
As the storm raged on, we poked around and explored the tiny village, discovering the Nutappu lodge. Run by Nappa Haruna, this place is the funkiest guesthouse we came across. Nappa was featured in a 1980 National Geo article, described as a “ski kichigae” or ski maniac. Our kind of host. Musical instruments are scattered all over the lodge for impromptu jam sessions, and Nappa makes the best bowl of mountain garlic ramen you’ll ever eat. Endless cups of tea and great conversation mad it hard to leave. But when high winds eventually closed the deserted tram, we packed up and headed toward Niseko, the fabled Mecca of Japanese powder.
The three resorts that make up Niseko United are Annapuri, Higashiyama, and Hirafu. Proximity to Australia and new ownership/management from down under means that the pistes and the village are literally overrun with Aussies. Who generally, are low-intermediate snowboarders. And realtors and tour operators. So they are bringing loads more in, and we arrived at the end of the Aussie national holiday. English was spoken almost everywhere, which is cool but not really why you come to Japan. In Niseko, you had to look hard to find an authentic place to eat dinner with the locs.
But you didn’t have to look far to find fields of joy, powderfields just beyond the ropes and diamonds everywhere inside and between the trees. Niseko boasts the most progressive open-boundary policy in Japan, and the only snow control program. And when they’re done with “Abba Lunch control” (see photo), get ready for some serious forking. Night skiing until 9:30 every night ensures that the super-keen can get 13 hours of pow a day. Think about that on days when it snows a meter at a time, stacked on a meter the day before and the day after. And stadium-wattage lighting makes the ethereal tree skiing a nighttime option.
For a week, we worked back and forth across the three resorts, always managing to be in the right place when a gate opened. I made friends with the Avie forecast-guru Shinya, who would high-five me on my way out the gate. It’s hard to come up with words to describe the powder without sounding cliché. It’s deep. And light. And devoid of the stress that comes on a big day in North America, or the Alps. It is pure magic. The locals loved my Rossi Steeze’s, probably reminded them of some weird Japanimation cartoon…I knew they would fit in somewhere. Smaller resorts just down the road like Moiwa and Rusutsu beckoned, and delivered the same incredible low-key powder experience. It isn’t the steepest skiing you’ll ever have, but it is the highest-quality powder tree skiing in the world. And it sure didn’t get old.
Our last night in Niseko, we stumbled on a restaurant that had the real local flavor, and in the bar, a photog was giving a slide show of the winter to date. I’ve been lucky enough to work with the best in the business over the years, and I always love to see these impromptu slide shows that showcase their oeuvre. We were the only westerners in the place that night, and the stoke was in full force, and they welcomed us into their powder tribe.
Back to Sapporo on the train and it all felt like a dream. We both knew it had been the best ski trip of our lives, and wondered if we just got lucky or if it’s always like that. One thing’s for sure; I’ll be working on my Japanese this summer. But my favorite translation (courtesy of Nappa): ski in Japanese means love. That’s what Hokkaido is all about.
Nice post Jack. And I thought we had a good winter.
I\’l be back…
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