36 Attachment(s)
TR: 2019 Hokkaido Car Danchi Food Porn Tour
After waiting stupidly for a decade to make this happen -- and a 20-page Google Doc of accumulated notes about how to run the best trip, thanks to the many good mags who've posted in this forum in the past! -- a decisive flight booking from TheBear had us committed to going to Japan after Christmas. FINALLY!!! Having hesitated for years after that awesome Nimbus video that first exposed me to a land of endless powder, we were going! I blew all my credit card miles on flights from Boston to Tokyo and proclaimed proudly that this bucket list trip would finally get dusted off the shelf.
TheBear was being kind to his new wife in not leaving until after New Year's, but, being newly single and with Xmas week off for all staff, I booked my flight for the 27th, put out the call for partners, and soon connected with Dongy, a fellow mag who was going to do the car danchi thing and #vanlife it in Hokkaido for three months. We chatted back and forth, had one phone call prior in which we got excited about being fellow splitboarders who would hunt down the easiest sidehilling, and planned to meet up in Sapporo once Dongy picked up his 4x4 van.
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I flew into Tokyo the night of Dec 28th and then connected to another flight to Sapporo. Being one of the busiest flight routes in the world, the plane used to ferry me on this short, 1.5 hour domestic flight was the same size plane (and just as full) as my intercontinental 14 hour flight from Toronto. I took the easy 40-min train from Chitose airport to Sapporo Station, hailed a cab, and stuffed my board bag on my lap in the back to Hotel Raffinato -- a great hotel with petite rooms with hilarious pre-fab bathrooms (not just the shower, the entire bathroom was one piece of fiberglass), and an amazing continental breakfast for just $50/night. I walked to a neighboring 7/11, bought my first round of convenience store sushi, marveled at its taste, and passed out.
The next day, I walked three blocks to a different hotel to take a bus to Teine Highlands for my solo day of shredding. There wasn't a ton of new snow, and I was kind of riding like shit, but then some high winds came in at lunch with a little bit of snow, the hill cleared out, and then....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STcpvHpaDxE
THE DEEPNESS! All the runs accessible by a short hike off the main quad were filled back in, and with ZERO people on the hill in the afternoon, I had personal faceshots for three hours. Having found what I came to Japan for, I walked down to the parking lot at the end of the day with a big smile, and the bus attendant for some reason ferried me to my own personal Prius taxi, and a white-gloved Japanese cabbie in a pressed suit ferried me all the way back to Sapporo. Service!
At this point, the jet lag hit me like a freight train, and I ate a granola bar in my room and passed out in my long underwear for the next 12 hours.
The next morning, I ate about four helpings of the continental breakfast, checked out, paged through a book about hunting Pablo Escobar, and waited for Dongy to secure his van and pick me up while the hotel staff shoveled the walkway in front over and over with the incoming flurries.
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Eventually he made it, and we motored out of Sapporo, up to a closed road (thanks Google Maps -- watch out!) that we had to turn around from, and then eventually got our bearings and headed to Rusutsu. We made it in time to walk through the hilarious Disneyland base hotel with its talking tree and get some night riding in. After riding some trees under the lights that were too flat for how deep the snow was, we found some short, steeper pitches to lap and found we were able to traverse far away from the lights and still see enough to donate copious faceshots to ourselves:
[APOLOGIES SINCE ALL MY VIDEOS FEATURE MY SUPER AWKWARD EXHALATION SOUNDS :/ ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5s1qaLgMok&feature=youtu.be
We then grabbed some microwave dinners at 7/11 and retired to the van. We then woke up to the supremely rare clear January day in Hokkaido! Along with tempting proximity to Shirbetsu-Dake, one of objectives for our trip...
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We skied Rusutsu that day, which had the most consistently open and available tree skiing of any place we rode. Huge variety of trees to hit, and in the relatively "low" snow year (this early in the season at least), almost no schwacky bushes to contend with, which would be a factor elsewhere. Didn't take a ton of photos. Beautiful day though, despite the one or two flats we had to hike out of. More talented people here looking to tear it up, so things did get tracked, but we found plenty of leftover tree runs to hit all day:
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We also got prime views of both Mount Yotei (left) and Shiribetsu (right), which we would try and hit the next day. That south face is a beaut! I was cursing myself that we had not taken advantage of the clear weather to get on some alpine terrain, but we resolved to make the most of the remaining daylight by crossing back over to the West Mountain, bootpacking the ridge towards Shiribetsu with a fleet of Ozzies without any avi gear :confused: and snuck onto a face with a similar aspect to dig a snowpit. We found a little suncrust on the top from the clear weather that day, but otherwise we found beautifully rightside-up snow with no major interface issues. Part of the appeal of a place where it snows a few inches every other hour, instead of all at once!
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The next morning, we awoke to calm winds and stormy skies, and skinned up through the waist-deep snow near the Rusutsu parking lot until we found the main skintrack on the south side of Shiribetsu. It was a gorgeous, quiet, snowy morn:
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We saw exactly one other person on our way up, and re-taught ourselves kickturns as we navigated the 40-degree skintrack through the trees away from the open slopes.
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Despite the hard work, we topped out faster than we thought, and shared high fives in the zero visibility at the top. Not having anywhere enough visibility to see into the bowl we wanted to ride, we resolved to stay in the trees and play it safe.
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While the top was punchy, wind-affected snow, as we got a little lower, the wind effect died away, and we found ourselves cackling in some of the best-quality snow either of us had ever ridden. Dongy slaying!
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We were making insane noises the whole ride down... it was amazing!!
Still with the place to ourselves, we crossed the drainage to a shorter treed pitch, did two laps there, then skinned back up and followed the ridgeline to get onto an open pitch I thought would point us right towards the exit of the valley. Tired and beat, we cut off a few small cornices to test the slope, then rode out, mindful of the many cornices still lining the top of the bowl. We hadn't seen any sign for concern, but new to town, we were still skeptical of the hazards. Turns out the snow on this final pitch was even DEEPER than everything else we rode that day, and soon tired gapes turned into giggling cackles again (final run in this video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vK7Hpimk0s
Completely spent and totally overwhelmed with the quality of our day, we split-skied back to the van and toasted cold 7/11-brand beers to an incredible day in the mountains with amazing terrain all to ourselves. We snuck into the Westin onsen a second time, spent an inordinate amount of time alternating between the hot and cold pools with all our fellow naked Japanese friends, and retired for a final night in the van in the Rusutsu parking lot.