If you're planning on renting, buying or repairing your gear in Hokkaido you could be in for an unpleasant surprise. There are plenty of good places to go, but it's not as intuitive as you might hope and many a traveller has been stuck trying to ski pow on skinny carve skis because it's all they could find. We've got the lowdown on the best places to go to rent, buy and fix your gear.
Kurodake's opening and closing dates for the season are up on their website. It's already open (with about a metre and a half under the chairlift).
The whole place closes down from January 4th to 28th. The gondola re-opens on the 29th of Jan, but the chairlift will still be closed until the the 18th of Feb. You can still lap the gondola while the chairlift is closed, but you'll have to pay ¥1,100 per ride.
All day tickets (¥3,800) and good times resume on the 19th of Feb. See you then!
Pete and I are like two sides of a very strange coin. He has stories of ski bum exploits that easily match mine: Seasons in Chamonix, Red Mountain. Months sustained on nothing but 5-cent donuts and cheap booze. Winters spent in a trailer park. It's some high quality ski bum pedigree.
But now he's a respectable man with a job and a family and a house and clean towels and all kinds of things I don't really understand. And his friends have followed the same path. Those same guys who scrounged for firewood to keep their trailer warm are now professionals with partners and kids and repayment plans.
So what happens to your inner ski bum when you settle down and get serious about building a proper life? Does the joy of blue skies and powder days and being in the mountains really fade?
There's something of an art to getting the most out a ski trip to New Zealand, but getting the most out of storm is one of the most subtle, and rewarding, arts to master. If you're looking to get the best out of some bad weather, you need to think about visibility, wind, snowfall, avalanche danger, terrain and lift closures, and road closures...
Before I left for Japan last winter I put the word out to everyone I knew: If you're thinking about heading to Hokkaido, let me know and I'll help sort you out with a fun trip.
An old school buddy of mine named Anthony (Anto) took up the offer. He was in Australia visiting family before heading back to the US, where he's been living for a few years, and was swinging through Hokkaido on the way.
We had plans to roll around for a week or so chasing good snow, but some visa delays meant that Anto had to push his flight back and ended up with just three nights in Japan. For a lot of travelers, trying to get decent skiing on three night stopover would be almost more trouble that it was worth. After you've caught trains and buses and found rental gear and checked into you accommodation, and then done that whole process again in reverse, it doesn't leave a lot of time to ski. So just how much can you do with three nights in Hokkaido?
