What up collective—
Hanging out on the Shinkansen [emoji583] and figured this was a great time to process the massive amount of stoke from the last week of skiing in the Tohoku region on Honshu. In an effort to protect the ski areas I went I’ll be avoiding using the names. If you want to know just shoot me a PM and I’m happy to share.
We flew into Narita about 4 days early to catch up to the jet lag and allow bags to transport to Morioka. Spo-Sea-JP was a 23 hour day so gear up and try to not sleep. We passed out by 20:00 local time in Tokyo and slept all night!
A couple rapid fire thoughts: the Yamoto Bag service location we used is on the south side of terminal one, the next stall over is Sakura mobile so this made it quite easy to mail bags and get a SIM card. Yamota will weigh your bags so make sure your shit is <50kg we had to pull out ski boots and our avy packs.
Tokyo:
Day 1-4
Jet Lagggggged but here!
Attachment 313968
night cap before crashing!
Attachment 313969
Night lights
Attachment 313971
Shibuya Crossing
Attachment 313972
Monster bar — I’d pass on this in the future.
Attachment 313973
Fuck the food was good!
Attachment 313974
Do the robot bar!
Attachment 313975
Attachment 313976
We booked the “Frontier Explorer” trip from Japan Ski Tours (JST). It had high reviews on Powderhounds and seemed about our speed. Pretty much lift accessed backcountry with 2 days of tram accessed touring on the end. Hearing of the low tide in Japan had me worried but since I was with a guide service I figured they would help us find good snow!
Rough outline:
Days 1-5 were in Morioka
Days 6-8 were in Aomori
Day 2 - resort 1
Snow report - 10-15cm of heavy cream cheese
Temp: 32-35*
Wind: none
First run was a gang bang on the gondy line it was heavy but fun, low snow meant there were a ton of things to jump off!!
Attachment 313977
As the day moved on it set up and got pretty ugly! The sun baked it... what happened to the classic endless Japow? Sure it was a low tide season but fuck.
There was also some pretty shitty guiding from JST. After a heavy first run Mrs SkiLyft needed to chill and let the legs recover — they assured me there would be however we got to our next run they showed a path to the right which “would open up to a groomer”. In short it didn’t; it was 1200 ft of concrete that set up to be hammered dog shit. I skied the run under the chair which the first bit was heavy but good and the bottom was survival skiing. Halfway down I poked right to meet up with the Mrs but when I looked up and saw the run they sent her down I was pissed! Her day was pretty wrecked from a confidence standpoint.
As the day went on we poked into some other trees but the low tide meant ALOT of brush was showing. That in combination with the dense snow meant your shit needed to be dialed — good thing I was on my goats as they ate that shit UP!
At least it was pretty
Attachment 313978
Attachment 313979
Went to our first onsen that evening not knowing what to expect but getting nekkid with strangers was a bit intimidating. This one was co-ed meaning separate entrances to one common pool. The water was murky so all was good! After copious amounts of sake was ordered we got over our nudity.
Attachment 313980
Day 3 - resort 2
Snow report - nil
temps - 28-30*
Wind : Moderate
This was a smaller place that supposably had good trees. The top was around 1300m so was my thoughts were “go high” and maybe we can get away from that crust that was definitely there from the now re-frozen 10-15cm from the day prior.
After the day priors stunt I sent the Mrs to ski with one of the other couples (on piste) while I followed the guides knowing I could billygoat through anything. First run they chose was below 1000m and as we poked in there, there was a wicked breakable crust and trees were again TIGHT! WTF “where are these guys taking us” I thought... this is your hill. They had us traverse out right on to the windward aspect. It was even more fuq’d!! Umm I’m out — this is bullshit. Maybe there just wasn’t any good snow on this hill! Time to hunt!
Met up with the Mrs and said fuck these guides, were are going high and to the leeward aspects to find lighter density snow. We ascended to the top chair and from the chair was looking down on what appeared to be high quality H2O!!
First run I chose — fucking titty deep
Attachment 313981
We poked through all these trees that morning and found amazing snow. Never once did we see our guides — in fact after the fact was talking with Ekke (a great German guy on our trip) who skied the morning with the guides and they continued to make poor choice after poor choice.
Moar stoke!!
Attachment 313910
Attachment 313911
During lunch the guides did not offer intel on where they were skiing and basically were useless — knowing that we had found great snow I grabbed Ekke and the Mrs and we began our self guiding — despite paying for guides who were useless other than making dinner reservations and taking us to the hill!
Ended the day at a traditional onsen. At this point Ekke and I began to question some of the decisions our guides were making. In efforts to prevent continued errors on their route finding choices. We were told that we were heading north the next day as the forecast was a bit more favorable. “Hmm that’s interesting” I thought — the snow forecast was more favorable to the south and looking at telemetry the south had cooler temps. Mrs SkiLyft told me to relax — as they maybe had “on snow” information that the internet couldn’t tell us. Okay — fine!
Day 4 - resort 3
Snow report - NONE
Temp - 28-32*
Wind - light
When we met for breakfast and our guide said “the mountain is reporting 10cm mid mountain” cool I thought new snow! We jumped in the van and right as we left I refreshed my regional snow report and saw that to the south there was a report of 30cm... hmmm interdasting wonder why were are not going south?
We showed up to the base and it was pretty warm, there was no snow and when I questioned the guide he said “huh, that forecast of 10cm seems to have disappeared”. I just about lost it knowing there was 30cm to the south, in fact one of the other customers did and started crying! I was pissed — he straight up lied to us!
It was clear the guides had no plan and were being lazy — at this point I was preparing myself to chase good snow — I threw skins in our packs and Ekke, the Mrs, and I ascended the resort to the highest chair where low and behold there was a backcounty gate— not once did our guide mention this but thankfully I was prepared. There was a splitboard group that was skinning up (ironically from JST) their guide was laser focused and had a plan, clearly!
We jumped in their track and I am so glad we did — a winter wonderland opened up, we skinned up to 1450m and surveyed our options.
Mellow rolley terrain but great snow
Attachment 313917
Cool terrain — but there was a visible crown from a recent avalanche and without a guide to navigate the valley below we did not feel comfortable navigating out. (Once back at the lodge we found out that the snowboarding group rode that arm)
Attachment 313919
We lapped the mellow sub 30* slopes a few times and farmed some high quality snow!
Attachment 313925
Attachment 313926
Attachment 313928
We got back to the base around 1:30 to a pretty devastated group. They had skied garbage snow that morning and stopped after an hour. We were pretty stoked at the turns we found but felt bad for those who did not bring skins as they missed out but this was another huge miss by the guides on preparing the group for what the day could hold!
That night as a group we sat down with the main guide who was our “taxi” driver and said “This is not working”... we are paying a whole lot of money for a self guided trip. I also qualified my statement basically saying you’re blaming the shit year but I have been finding awesome snow EVERY DAY, I’m just using the weather/wind report to find it — something a guide with 6 years of experience in a region should easily be able to do.
Day 5 - resort 4 for some cat skiing in the AM and lift accessed turns at resort number 2 in the afternoon.
Snow report : nil
Temp: 26-29*
Wind: moderate
Based on the conversation with our guide the owner of Japan Ski Tours showed up to guide as lead guide. I was stoked!! Something got through!!
Before jumping on the Cat I grabbed him and shared what my experience had been — he listened and honestly was shocked. He wanted to continue the conversation as the day went on! We got in the cat and found some great turns at the top — with a lead guide who was navigating the terrain with us and showing us the way... finally!!
Attachment 313929
Attachment 313930
Attachment 313931
Attachment 313932
We grabbed a quick lunch then went back to resort 2 — owner of JST wanted to follow me around to see where I found good turns on day 2 as “chair 4 has never held good snow”. We jumped in the trees and it was DEEP, Cold, and Loaded! After a few runs he continued to guide us into some great spots including down into a crater of a volcano where the onsens draw their water!! Pretty rad day — and finally felt like there was guidance. We continued talking and he mentioned that his guides were having a really hard time keeping the stoke up this year and they have never had to work this hard to find good snow in the past so it’s stretching them; I understood but basically said; with climate change this will become the reality!
Attachment 313933
After this we loaded up the van and drove up to Aomori!
More food!
Attachment 313937
Attachment 313935
Attachment 313936
