Sayonara Tokachidake and Konnichiwa Otaru

We loaded up the van, said Sayonara to Tokachidake and headed to the city of Otaru (around 4 hours from hotel to hotel.)  For the next 6 nights we will be staying in the Grand Park Hotel in Otaru.  The hotel is located above a large mall and we decided to wander and enjoy the Japanese mall scene.

We will never grow up!

Friday morning was very windy and snowing so we decided to ski the local ski area of Asari.  It was about 15 minutes from our hotel and knew we would be able to get some fresh turns.  When we arrived to Asari there were 6 buses full of Japanese children and we thought we made the wrong choice.  None of these kids were there to poach the fresh snow from the night before.

Julien and his new friends.

Small mountain, but great short shots through the trees.

Now that we were accustomed to the Japanese way of skiing an Onsen was in order so we stopped by a hotel to enjoy the hot springs.  After the hot springs we decided we didn't have enough skiing for the day and decided to hit up another local ski area (Tenguyama) for some night skiing.  To our surprise they only had a tram running which allowed for some long steep night laps.

Night Tram

Otaru at night

Julien loves Tenguyama.

The snow report in the morning at Kiroro read 0 cm overnight, but we headed up the mountain road 45 minutes to see for ourselves.  That snow report was way off as 30 cm of new snow had fallen overnight and we were ready to ski the goods.

Leif getting after it.

Pat messing around in the deep snow about to spray the cameraman.

Pat deep in the snow spraying the cameraman.

Julien no longer practicing the Tomahawk.

After the first two runs, we ran into a few skiers asking us to not ski in they're lines as they were filming.  We of course asked what they were filming for and it was the TGR (Teton Gravity Research) crew skiing the deep snow at Kiroro for next years ski movie.  Always a good sign to be skiing in an area where pro riders are at.

Pat hiking to earn those turns.

Ben on the last run of the day.

We explored the great trees of Kiroro getting in all sorts of different fun shots of deep snow.  By 4:00 pm the group was ready to head back to the hotel for a quick Onsen and be ready for a new day in the wonderful world of Hokkaido.

arigato gozaimas

-Ben

Tokachidake

Two days later and 40 cm of new snow, we headed to the south face of Tokachidake to amass as many face shots as possible. We slapped on our skins and set off on a mild 45 minute ascent.

Ben and Ray skinning up above the hotel.

On our first run we met the baddest nordic skier in the land, Trigva who linked up and skied with us all day. It looks like we've got a place to stay in Norway! Although Trigva is from Norway he told us he is living in Hokkaido for an entire year, employed as a nordic skiing coach in a nearby town. Fun fact, he went to Denver University and was on the nordic skiing team. T ended up having quite a few mutual friends with Ray, small world.

Trigva testing out his alpine skiing skills

We lapped that southern slope all day, climbing over 2000 vertical feet putting the earn your turn mantra to the test but skiing neck deep powder over 5 amazing runs made it an everlasting experience. I'll let the pictures talk for themselves. 

"The sport of skiing consists of wearing three thousand dollars' worth of clothes and equipment and driving two hundred miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and get drunk." - Patrick San

"Man, I can't wait to eat more noodles later" - J San

"This is Pow Planet"  - Ben San

As always we finish everyday with a long relaxing soak in the indoor/outdoor (rotenburo/notenburo) onsen at the Komihoroso lodge. The onsen is a hot spring bath that has over 20 minerals including sulfer, zinc, iron, etc and are said to have healing powers. Now we can't say for sure but the Japanese do seem to live forever while smoking like fish, so did we find the fountain of youth? 

Outdoor Onsen at Kamihoroso

Indoor Onsen at Kamihoros

On our third day at Tokachidake we drove down the mountain, jumped across a creek and skinned up a beautiful winter wonderland of a forest to drop in from to two large ridges. 

Foreground is an onsen lodge, background are the two ridges we skied from. We crossed a creek that flows down and to the right from this picture

Creek in Tokachidake area

Crossing the creek

Pat Owen and Leif Routman Skinning up to the ridge

2 happy campers after some snow sliding

Conditions above tree-line that day were variable at best with high winds and very low visibility but we had our real world mountain men with Pat Owen, Leif Routman and Ray Bernardo to get us down safe, with a few pow turns here and there and pretty much everywhere along the way.

Tomahawk Lounis

Patrick San

Ben San

On our second run of the day we ran into a group of 3 americans all of which went to University of Colorado, so thats 4 people on the mountain out of 4 that went to a CO university...We finished the day with our usual onsen and another one of the absolutely amazing dinners at Komihoroso while imbibing in a 90 minute $12 all you can drink "free drink" (Still haven't figured out what the Japanese call it). We stayed up late with a couple of french swiss trading stories and making fun of the French Euro crew that came in late night like tornado leaving a mess in their wake, trashing the front halls, ignoring the Japanese customs and did we mention they were french...The next day we are off to Otaru to ski some Japanese resorts. Until then Sayonara! (Sayonara is apparently the Japanese word for goodbye, Julien, Ben and I thought is was Spanish). 

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

-Patrick San

Tokyo to Asahikawa

Ko-nichi-Wa!

We are finally updating the blog after 2 days of skiing. We have been blessed so far with clear weather, great snow, and unbelievable food. Below is a timeline of our experience so far.

Friday/Saturday 1/16-1/17

Me (Julien) and Patrick K arrived in Tokyo where Ben B had landed about 30 minutes prior, we made our way to the "capsule" hotel for the night. Our next leg of travel was a short flight from Tokyo to the city of Asahikawa, on the island of Hokkaido (see map below).

Leif, Ray and Pat O were already at their hostel for the past 2 days in the mountains near Asahikawa, enjoying the onsen and skiing on Asahidake (Mount Asahi) which is the largest, highest mountain on the island of Hokkaido.

The Red pin is the city of Asahikawa

We flew into Asahikawa Airport then drove to the northern point on this map, which is the Asahidake Ropeway tram. The southern point on the map was our next stop, the Kamihoroso Ryokan.

The morning of 1/18, Ben , Patrick K and I flew into Asahikawa, rented our beautiful Toyota Hiace Long Van, and made our way up into the mountains for a some skiing with the rest of the crew.

Picking up the van, very bright outside sun reflecting off of snow, not joking

6 dudes, 1 van

It was only a 1 hour drive up to the Asahidake Ropeway. This ropeway is just a tram that takes hikers and skiers about halfway up the large volcano.

stock photo

Because this ropeway is primarily to serve summer hikers, there is some hiking and skinning to do in order to access the quality skiing. We did about a 10-15 minute boot-pack (hike) over to the next drainage south of the tram, and skied a good steep pitch with decent snow. There was a lot of wind on this day, so we headed in after this run and made our way to our hotel (another 1 hour drive, south), the Kamihoroso Ryokan (southern point on map above), where we would be spending the next 4 days skinning up from the hotel and exploring the entire area below another large volcano, Tokachidake (Mount Tokachi).

So the Kamihoroso Ryokan (Ryokan just means it is a hotel/hostel, where there are natural hot springs baths to soak in) is an unbelievable place where we are given kimonos to wear, onsens (hot springs) to soak in, and served authentic japanese food. People would spend the $110 that we are paying per night, just for the meal we get for dinner. It is fully included in our hotel price.

Our first day of skiing in the Tokachidake area was great, we were lucky to get good clear conditions so we could get our bearings and find the slopes that we wanted to ski.  Although it did take a bit of time and wasted energy skinning around the area, we ended up finding a great spot and had 3 runs with excellent knee to waist deep blower snow (videos coming soon).

Beautiful Van, beautiful scenery

Leif and Pat O skinning up for another run

From left to Right, Ben, Pat K, and Ray B 

Pat K

Sun starting to set on first day

So we woke up today and there is about 8 inches of new snow. Net post will include some skiing footage and more pictures!


-Julien