TR: Hokkaido Late Jan 2019
I got to go to Hokkaido for 2 weeks with Owen Leeper and Matt McDonald, two awesome buddies. Here is the story go how it came together, where we went, how we ate, and of course because this is me, why I bought the gear I did, as well as changes Id make if I go again.
Its a little long. Ill try to add more pictures over the next few days. Im not great at this so it might a few tries to get right.
If you dont like how I ramble on about shit, fuck off, its my trip report and this is TGR so Ill do what I want.
All skiers and photographers are Owen Leeper, Matt McDonald and I. I forget who took which pic and don’t feel like tagging everyone individually
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TR: Hokkaido Late Jan 2019
Saturday January 19 2019
We all get up early, and catch our flight, look for breakfast, decide on gyoza and ice cream, note to self, budget Japanese airline terminals dont have the greatest amenities in them. We actually have tickets this time, so we get seats, which is very not stressful or dramatic, unlike the day before. Two hours later and we land in Sapporo, get the rental car which has snow tires and an English speaking GPS (but all the letters are still in Japanese, so it still wasn’t very useful, thankfully it was free), and off to Niseko we go! We pass a cool rest stop with lots of mushrooms, and a huge dinosaur, so we pull over for a snack, get buns and meat on a stick, and back on the road as quick as we can because we wanted to ski! Matt sets us up with a sweet house at the base of Niseko Gran Hirafu, a 5 min walk to the gondola, and a ski back to the house!
It’s only noon, we are all excited and itching to ski, and being the good ski bums we are, we change, get lift tickets and head as high as we can on the mountain, right to the nearest gate because we all know the best powder is out of bounds, and to the skiers left of the Niseko resorts. We are a bit perplexed after the first run, but it is day one, and 4in of dust on a fairly firm base is alright to stretch our legs after flying across the world to find pow. We did find some deeper turns, but nothing like what we thought we would find. A few more laps, some more exploring, and its night, but the lights at Gran Hirafu come on so we keep skiing! We poked around and found some soft bumps, and some pillows to jump off of, well for Owen to jump off of cause Im no where near that level. We didn’t prepare for night skiing, and none of us had clear/low light lenses, so we call it a day, headed back to the room to change and get some food. A good friend suggested Niseko Ramen, which just happens to be 2 blocks down the street from where we were staying, how convenient, so we walk over on down the street to find some excellent ramen. In anticipation of what we expected to be a powder day the next day, because that was the forecast, we headed to bed, not fully adjusted to the time zone, but still somewhat tired.
Sunday January 20 2019
Day two at Niseko, and we got more time to explore and poke around the 4 Niseko United resorts. We go for a hike to the top in a pingpong ball, and skied down in the same pingpong ball. We did find some fun longer (for Japan) fall line runs to ski, but we still hadn’t found what we would consider deep turns, not what I thought we would be finding in Japan. We poke out of bounds some more, figure out our way around bit better, but still don’t find that deep japanuary Japow we flew half way around the world for.
4in was great to ski, and if we get that every day for the next 10 days, I’ll be stoked, but its not quite what I was expecting. When my ex texts me that night (Japan time) and wants to know if I saw the 192 inch forecast for Snowbird/Alta and wanted to com down for it, Im starting to wonder if I should of stayed home. She is selfish, hence being an ex, but seriously guys and girls, don’t text your friends and loved ones about how good it is at home when you are on a ski trip, just dont, don’t be that guy/girl, no one likes that guy/girl.
We doo some digging on Snow-Forecast.com, J2SKI.com and the NOAA surface weather graphs, and see a few storms are moving in, so I hold out hope that we will get a huge refresh and Japan will grace us with the powder that makes it so famous. We make a plan to ski Niseko Moiwa the next day. Dinner was fairly forgettable, we went looking for sushi, but in a resort town, that isn’t quite in a skids budget, so we settled for some hot pot, and a few other apps on the menu at an even more forgettable restaurant, but still had to stop at the Indian food trucks and in Lawsons to get more food to fill up. Lawsons is like 711 or your corner store with snacks and beer, its awesome and saved the day more then once. We also checked out the “Fridge Door Bar”which turned out to be a huge tourist trap with thee most over priced drinks I have ever seen, and I lived in NYC for ten years, and Jackson Hole for 5. Three drinks came to over $60 USD, really? One was in a glorified martini glass that wasn’t even 1/3 full.
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Monday January 21 2019
We wake up to 8in of new snow, even more apparently on the hill, but the snow and avi report are vague at best, so we don’t really know how much fell. Inaccurate forecasts and snow reports are a common trend for Japan, the forecasts are often wrong, both high and low wrong, so don’t stress, just go skiing. It almost seems as if the weather forecasters use a bingo roller cage and what ever numbers fall out the bottom, they pick as a snow total and what they will forecast for the next day.
Back to the regularly scheduled programing, we pack up the car and head to Niseko Moiwa, about a 15 minute drive from the base of Niseko Grand Hirafu, only to get there and be told the one quad is not open due to high winds, they didn’t even put the chairs on the line, and they were not sure if they would get it open today, so again plan B kicks in and we head to Niseko Gran Hirafu to ride more chair lifts. 15 min later and we are back at Gran Hirafu, only to see Vail style lift lines wrapping up the hill, hum, this isn’t what we planned on. We work our way around and get to a bubble quad chair (bubbles chairs are awesome, just don’t try to sit on your poles like I did almost every time we got on the chair) that takes us high enough up on the mountain to get some pow turns. We poke around inbounds for a run or two and realize there isn’t much there, so we go looking at the rope lines of the restricted danger keep out areas, and see some tracks headed into them. So as every good ski bum with avi gear, partners and knowledge would do, under the ropes we went to find the first nirvana of the trip. Our own little powder stash, waste to over head deep turns, until we had to traverse back to the resort, 8-10 turns of good fall line pow, and traverse 343987 miles back to the resort. A group of pros are shooting in there too, so we give them room to work, until I didn’t and felt like an apology was in order. I didn’t see them again that day, so I dropped one of the guys a DM apologizing and he was super cool about it and said no big deal, the mountains are for everyone. Plus one for that dude for being super cool! It was good enough for us, so we kept at it all day until tracked out all the faces we deemed safe to ski.
Towards the end of the day we were pushing what would be considered safe and I popped a wind loaded pocket, then cut under said pocket and got myself slid. I screwed up, and didn’t manage my sluff, or ski to a safe zone. Instead, I cut under the pocket I knew I popped, then skied into a wind lip, and slowed way down, allowing my sluff and the avalanche I triggered to catch me. The slide caught me, I did one barrel roll, stopped in a sitting position with my legs down hill, as this happened I covered my mouth with one hand and raised my other as high as I could, which did clear the snow. As the snow around me slowed down, I was able to stand up and self rescue. Both skis were on my feet, one pole was MIA, the other was in my hand, and everything else felt where it should be, body felt fine, well except for being shook up. I stand up and check around me to look for the safest way to a safe zone, and ski to meet up with the guys. When all this happened, I apparently skied out of view of them, so they missed the entire ordeal, granted it lasted 3 min (so probably 25 seconds max). They did see me ski back into view and skied down to me. I told them what happened and we all decided to be more careful. This was the only incident in Japan with avalanches and it would of seriously sucked to fly half way around the world to die, like seriously suck, but I got lucky, and it was time for beers as the light was fading, and we had tracked out everything we deemed safe to ski.
Dinner was Niseko Ramen again, after failing to get into the other two ramen stops in town, and making another quick stop at the Indian food trucks for some more Garlic Nah. We decide to give Moiwa another shot the next day then head to Kiroro the day after, so we pack up for our first big move.
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TR: Hokkaido Late Jan 2019
Tuesday January 22 2019
Niseko Moiwa has 3 lifts, but really only one quad that goes to the top and is worth our time. We were told about the famous Moiwa side country, so we did one inbounds run first, just to say we did it, .and you don’t pass good snow for the hope of better snow. Then, because of what we were told was famous backcountry, we headed skiers left, and found some good trees that gave us 8-10 awesome pow turns, and another 234987 mile traverse back to the base. Yet again we found a short steep pitch, but not quite what we were looking for, so we headed skiers right for the next lap, which wasn’t much better, but we did find a great very Japanese sign insert picture of danger sign. We figured we missed something going skiers left, so we followed the foot steps out to the next ridge over and found some great waste deep turns, about 8 of them, then more traversing back to the base, see a trend here… We had a little powwow and decided to try skinning up the ridge we walked out to get more vertical, and finally found what we were looking for (well sort of). They were the best turns of the trip so far, and it included jumping off some 8-15 ft cornices, which helped. Moiwa is cool, but its weird in that you don’t need a guide, but you need a little luck. By luck I mean the upper lifts at Niseko Annupuri were closed most of the day so no skier traffic was skiing down on to us, and having the will to skin up the ridge between the two resorts, gave us some great pow turns, but it still leads to a 234987 mile traverse back to the base (and don’t miss the little sign for Moiwa cause if you do, actually, I don’t know what will happen because none of us missed it).
We had a great day (actually two back to back) but decided it was time to get away from the crowds at the Niseko resorts, too many Aussies and Kiwis, not the authentic Japanese vibe we were looking for. We got a ton of info that Kiroro was supposed to be awesome, but didn’t want to pay to stay in Kiroro so we headed to Otaru, which is a sea side town about 35 min from Kiroro. Insert pajama pic We booked a great little hotel room, walked to a sweet sushi restaurant and got stuffed. Well Owen and Matt did because I ate something that wasn’t shell fish (but was some sort of squid I think?) but gave me a funny reaction so I ran back to the hotel room to get some Benadryl. Oops my bad and more sushi for them.
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Wednesday January 23 2019
We pack up and head to Kiroro with anticipation of hopefully finding some good lift access fall line pow, boy were we wrong, like really really wrong…. I would highly recommend against giving Kiroro a single penny if you have the ability and drive to tour. The best terrain is east/to the right as you drive into the resort, and off on that side there is a skin track leading to it out of the parking lot. The resort says you need to buy a lift ticket and fill out a climbing plan to access the back country, but no one checks at the gates, so use the time instead to get a head start on skinning. If you poke around enough, you’ll find the skin track the guides have put in, and they make life really easy. If you find a super steep skin track, its probably an ascender boot pack snowboarders put in, and they suck to try to skin up, we tried, and partially succeeded, then switchbacked. Owen is a beast and made it most of the way up the ascender boot pack, it was amazing and frustrating to watch at the same time. Be careful of the river crossings, they are everywhere and usually if you poke around for a bit you can almost always find a bridge and don’t have to huck over the river.
We knew we were not going to ski Kiroro again, so we looked at the forecast, which we had figured out by then was a total crap shoot, to see where the best snow would be. Asahidake was by far the winner with 67 cm forecasted by the end of Thursday (yeah 2 ft in 24 hours), the next closest snow forecast for the same period was 35 cm, so we packed up and headed north in a Japanese blizzard! Just under four hours later, and $40 in tolls (yep you read that right, $40 in tolls), we got to a sweet little hostel (Matty found it last winter and it was well worth it) with its own onsen and is 3 min down the road from Asahidake Ropeway. Since we didn’t know anything about Asahidake, we did some digging and found they have one tram, that takes you up 500 vertical meters (1640 ft), 3 groomed trails, and some of the best off piste skiing in Japan. Im starting to think we might of found what we came looking for, deep Japan powder, steep trees, and smiles all day long. We pulled in at 10 pm, and it had snowed over a foot already, with more coming down, and it was coming down hard. We unpacked, got some beers, made sure everything was ready for tomorrow, and fell asleep with dreams of deep Japanese pow, little did we know how deep or what we were getting ourselves into.
Thursday January 24 2019
Morning comes early as we were all excited for our first deep day in Japan. We wake 18in on the roof of the car, which was cleared off when we pulled in the night before. Giddy with excitement, we hastily eat breakfast and get to the resort, which I use loosely because all there is at Asahidake is one tram, 3 sort of runs that were groomed at some point the previous day, and a hotel. Snow was still coming down hard, and it was light fluffy cowboy pow, which is what we expected since Mt Asahidake is the highest mountain on Hokkaido, but is every different that was we had found so far in Japan. On slow days, which today was even though it snowed over 2 ft the night before, only about 30-45 people ride the 100 person tram, the tram runs every 20 min (elbow room on a tram on a pow day, unheard of!), which the Jackson skier in me said fine, we will get a bunch of laps in and between laps get some water, a snack, and go back up. How wrong I was…
The tram was cool and roomy because there weren’t many people on it, and when we got to the top, old man winter was waiting for us. The beta we had accumulated from Matty’s trip last winter and talking to friends who were here last week, told us to hike to the ridge 3-5 min west (go right off the tram dock, so west?), drop off over the nose, and stay between the groomers. That works unless you cant see the end of your ski pole, never less where the groomers are or where the nose is. We gave it a shot anyways because, well, why not and were soon met with waste deep pow and chest deep wind lips we were walking though. The crazy euros and there guides let us set the track through the snow until we got to the trees, which were probably only 500 ft away, but took 15 min to get to (there goes racing the tram…). Traversing on fairly flat ground, in a white out, with waste deep pow, isn’t easy, even with uber fat pow ski on. We make it to the tree line and get our first taste of deep, light, ski movie quality Japow, and OMG was it deep. You had to ski with a buff over your mouth, or you would inhale a mouth full of pow as soon as you opened your mouth, and good luck seeing the trees, and good luck knowing when to turn, you better do the best you can to pop out of the snow in between each turn or your were in trouble. But yet again, the epically deep fluffy Japow turns lead to 10 miles of traversing out, but it was alright since it was groomed and had 4 in of new snow on it, which made it fun!
We got two more runs in and each run kept getting deeper and deeper, it was epic, even the traverses were getting us face shots, it was great. This is why I came to Japan, and it was awesome. I don’t think we ever beat the tram down, but it didn’t matter because I was 100% fine with the rest. Then the day took a quick pause as the tram closed for 2 hours due to wind.
When the tram reopened, we went up for the last lap of the day (it was 3:30 pm) and found the deepest snow of my life. It was too deep, unskiable deep, way too unstable to get on anything with enough pitch to get your speed up to actually ski the deep snow, and everything that didn’t have a high probability of killing you, you couldn’t turn or you’d get stuck because there was that much resistance pushing against you. We did find a little gully/depression that was just under 28 degrees and it was insane. You were creating a bow wake 10-15 ft infront of you as you were trying to ski. Insane, 100% insane. Because this is Japan and not Jackson, Snowbird, Crystal, Squaw, we skied into a flat section and were polling across the flats in chest deep. When I say chest deep, I mean the snow was at my chest buckle for my backpack, I’m 6 ft 3 inches tall and the traverses were that deep, just imagine how deep the snow was when we were skiing.
We figured 48 inches fell in less then 24 hours, and with the wind, there were pockets over 60 inches deep. The skiing as nuts, the early turns in the day were fun, but as it got deeper, it was too much snow to ski. Im not talking about the avi danger, but it was too deep to actually move in. I never really thought Id say that, but it was. The only skis bigger then my 196 cm Protests is the Liberty Genome or the DPS Spoon, but even those wouldn’t of been big enough. Owen was on his Icelandic 191cm Icelandic Nomad 125’s and Matty on 175cm Atomic Bentchetler 120s, and none of us could stay on top. Today is why I came to Japan, and now the trip is worth it, it was so cool. Im really excited to explore Asahidake tomorrow, and find what else there is to ski. Hopefully the wind doesn’t screw up the snow pack too bad, because if the snow settles and stabilizes a bit, tomorrow could be bonkers.
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TR: Hokkaido Late Jan 2019
Monday January 28 2019
With the snow sub par, and more on the way, but it not here yet, and not having found avalanche road barriers for Owen to backflip yet (we all wanted to ski the barriers, not just Owen), we decided to head out and see what we could find. 10 min later we found a great set of snow fences. Matty and Owen went first, and after hearing the oomphfs upon landing I offered to run shuttle and take pictures, my back would not of been happy with repeated hard landings. The first lap the guys sent big straight airs, and made plans to set Owen up for a back flip and Matty with a front flip. Second lap, we figured out the right spot for me to be in for a picture, Matty set up for a second angle and Owen threw a massive backflip. Its so cool watching friends do cool shit, and when Owen throws a backflip, there is nothing small about it since he is 6-2 and on big skis. One more lap to get video of Owen and Matt linking up the whole run together, and we headed up the road to a local backcountry spot to find some powder. Thirty eight minutes (according to Owen, I was up in 41 minutes cause I’m slow) later we get just short of a ridge in 20-25 knots of wind and snow coming down sideways, we rip skins and ski back down. The 5 inches of new pow that fell in the past 2 hours helped, but skiing on crust isn’t quite what we came to Japan for, but it was good to get on soft snow again. Since we had to drive past the snow fences again, Owen and Matt did another lap with another big back flip by Owen.
Tonight was our last night together, and since we already had one big night out, we checked out the most popular ramen shop in Niseko. The restaurant is on the first floor, but the waiting line goes though the lobby and up into a gift shop on the second floor, which doesn’t seem fishy at all, hum, BS. After getting skipped on the waiting list because we were shopping for souvenirs we wouldn’t buy, and asking the little old Japanese lady where we were on the standby list, we got a table and sat down for a feast. Owen, who never was full from any meal, and was the originator of the running joke was second dinner was at Lawsons every night for buns and fried chicken, found the large ramen bowl, which is 50% bigger then a normal ramen, and dug in. Matty got regular ramen and I had a pork w/ rice dish. After that, we headed back to the hotel for Matty to pack because he was heading home the next day. Owen and I decided to wait until we saw the weather in Niseko to plan for our last day. We had hoped to catch a weather window to get up Mt Yotei, or another of the famous Japanese volcanos, but we also had multiple people suggest checking out Sapporo Kokusai, about 2 hours from where we were staying. Neither of us was looking forward more time in the car, but at the same time neither of us wanted to ski the Niseko resorts, or skin up Yoti in subpar weather.
Tuesday January 29 2019
We woke up to Matty's alarm so he could catch a bus to Chouste International Airport, said our good byes, and off he went. Our threesome was down to a twosome for the last day, but it was alright because work lets us go on these trips, so we have to enjoy the time we do get on them, and when work calls, you have to go back sometimes. The weather was overcast with a low cloud level, 4-6 in of new snow fell at Niseko, and neither of us was feeling skiing Niseko. We decided to head to Sapporo Kokusai which ended up being one of the top three decisions we made. Sapporo Kokusai is the closest resort to Sapporo (not sure according to who, but Im running with it), and as we pulled up we were greeted with the parking lot full of coach busses, like 60 large coach busses. We did know the groomed, patrolled terrain wasn’t too massive, so we were tentative that the slopes were overrun with school kids. Well, we were right, they were over run with school kids, but it was alright because we didn’t ski any groomers. Two buddies of Owens, Julian and Colter, both suggested skiing under the gondola, and to ignore the ropes and large red danger signs attempting to keep people on the groomed trails. Well, we listened and ignored the ropes and signs, and found the best pow we had since Asahisake, boot top to waste deep coastal cream. After three laps of orientation we figured out the zone we wanted to ski, and found Owens Japan nirvana, trees and pillows to jump off of, perfect untouched ridges for me to ski down, what we (or at least I) was looking for in Japan. Of course, because we were still in Hokkaido, the powder runs were followed by 2193842 mile traverses back to the base, but in this case it was alight because of all the cool trees and pillows to jump off of on the way.
On one of the traverses out, we watched two Aussie kids ski off this cool looking tree into the river bed, and both of us thought, AH HA, we found it. The tree was perfect, just enough snow to ride off of, the right amount of ramp off the traverse to get speed to get out on it, and a landing with 24-36 inches of soft pow. Insert tree pic. A few laps later I spotted a tree that looked like someone built a ramp up it to backflip off it. It took us another few laps and two short skins to get to it. When we did get there, this tree was built for being backflipped. Light was fading fast, so Owen went to work stepping out the run in and ramp up the tree. I looked at where to take the picture from, Owen and Matty had been giving me a crash course in ski action photography all trip and I tried to use everything I had learned to get to the right spot. Of course Owen threw a huge backflip with a grab, and I screwed up the picture, had Owen not in the perfect open sky spot, but had him with a tree behind him. My fuck up didn’t matter because a huge backflip was the perfect way to cap off one heck of a ski trip, and it was too dark out for the picture to come out anyways with out a bright flash, which we didn’t have.
We skied back to the car, packed up, and headed to Choutse for the night. Since it was our last night, we found a local sushi spot a few blocks from the hotel for an easy dinner. Dinner was good, not amazing, but it is worth noting we got hit with a 500 yen “table charge” per person, we didn’t ask for an amuse bouche but were given one then charged for it. First time either of us had that happen to us this trip, just interesting. After dinner we got packed up and ready to head home.
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Cool. We made a decision with the best info we had at the time and found the deepest snow I’ve ever tried to ski. I’m sure Kiroro is good some days, so are Vail, Breck, and Powder Mountain, you can have them.
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