The Mountain Murmur

Japan: Powder Days

Posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Japan has been a trip I will never forget. The mountains of Hokkaido seem to have endless runs of powder skiing and pillow drops. The culture of Japan is a combination of ancient rituals infiltrated with western pop culture. As I boarded the plane in Jackson Hole, I was filled with anticipation and anxiety. Japan would be my first opportunity to see if I had what it would take to be part of ski movie. My confidence was high after returning home from Russia with a win under my belt. I may have been a little overconfident jumping into something I had never done before. I thought filming would be a lot like skiing in a competition; find a line, memorize it, and ski it.

I’ll never forget the pressure I felt the first night arriving to the small apartment of Niseiko. The Sweetgrass ProductionsTeam: Nick Waggonner, Ben Sturgulewski, Ian Hock, and Mike Brown had a lot of confidence in my ability without ever seeing me ski. I was overwhelmed with the pressure I felt to meet their expectations. My first day filming was with Nick. I followed him through the deep snow of Niseko to a zone he thought would be perfect for me. As we reached the top of the mountain, he pointed to a 20 foot cliff drop.

“What do you think about that?”

I didn’t want to disappoint him, so my first shot turned out to be a 20 foot drop. I stuck it and I’m pretty sure I was tight in the air. I spent the next four hours dropping every pillow and cliff in sight. I was feeling great and looked forward to seeing the footage. I still haven’t seen the footage, but apparently it didn’t look as good on film as it felt in real life. I was going to have to work a lot harder to get a shot in the Sweetgrass film.

On Day Four, Team Sweetgrass, as I like to call the boys, had spent the last month in Neseiko and were ready to check out some new areas. So at 4:30 in the morning we loaded the vans and headed north towards Furano.

The team was joined by Bubbles, a local snowboarding legend and Atsushi, one of the happiest Japanese snowboarders I have ever met. At 10 a.m. we pulled into a parking lot with ten foot snow banks and to my surprise a big red tram. The mountain looked promising and the tram meant I didn’t have to skin to the top of the mountain. Yahoo!

“Don’t forget to bring your skins,” Ben yells over his shoulder as we head for the tram. “What was I thinking?” Why would we want to use this big beautiful tram when we could skin. Luckily, we did purchase a one trip ticket to the top.

We were lucky and found a great zone filled with multiple pillow drops and pow lines.

As the sun began to set, the temperatures dropped quickly and we were running out of lines to ski. I headed down the slope in search of one last line to ski before the sun was gone. I found an incredible tree with a huge pillow of snow in the center of it’s branches. My original thought was to build a jump to launch myself onto the pillow and from the pillow out of the tree.

After building the jump, I couldn’t picture how I would actually get enough air to land on top of the pillow. I could only envision myself splatting into the middle pillow. We decided we could all use a little comic relief after working hard all day. So I decided to go for the splat move.