As 2019 turned into 2022 and “covid 19” turned into just “covid”, it became increasingly clear that Japan was not going to let us in for the 2021-22 winter. This is sad news, because I have been eating sub-par rice for FAR TOO LONG.
Anyway, I wasn’t going to sit through another Australian summer. So instead, I packed my bags, donned my mask, stuck a PCR swab into the bottom of my brain and got on a flight to the US.
I was about to write my customary apology for getting this end-of-season wrap up out a bit late. But then I realised it’s still March. The spring skiing is great in Hokkaido. I only left a week ago.
But a lot has changed in the last few weeks.
It seems a bit strange to write an end-of-season wrap up now. Skiing is a strange thing to be thinking about in the face of a global pandemic. But as I lay on the couch mid-quarantine in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney (all international travellers are required to self-quarantine for two weeks upon returning to Australia. We got to choose where we’d hang out. Now the army escorts you to a hotel) I recalled a conversation with a new guest, Magnus, back in February. He’d had a bit of a logistical debacle getting to Hokkaido and as we shuttled around collecting replacement gear he said something like:
“This is still worth it. If we get a few great powder turns, those moments stay with us for the whole year.”
This is the first in a hopefully semi-regular series of updates about conditions in central Hokkaido and wherever else we end up touring. It’s easy to have grand plans about updating the website, but those plans pretty quickly fall away in the thick of guiding, exploring, and riding good lines. So if you don’t see an update for a while, that probably means the snow is good and we’ve prioritised “information gathering” over sitting in front of the laptop.
This is getting a bit redundant, since Rinyu Kanko (the corporation that run the Kurodake Ropeway website) have updated their website and it’s now easy to navigate in English, but here are the closure dates for Kurodake this winter:
The ropeway is closed from the 6th to the 31st of January (the chairlift is also closed for this period, since you need to ride the ropeway to get to the lift). It reopens on Saturday the 1st of Feb.
The chairlift is closed for another three weeks, until the 21st of February.
Plan your touring in the alpine above Sounkyo for February, and plan your big days for the last week of Feb and March.
We’ve updated the website! As our focus has shifted to backcountry guiding over the last few years, our old website (which talked a lot about resort skiing) got a bit out of date.
We’ve tried to set up the new website to do a few things:
Clearly explain what we do. For all those people who have commented that we’re very good at delivering good times in the mountains and very bad at business - we hope this is an improvement.
Introduce our trips to New Zealand. We’ve been skiing and guiding here for years (with local companies) so it’s great to team up with them to offer our own trips.
Set out a bunch of information to help people plan their trips a bit better. Most of the people who end up on our website are looking to get away from the crowds and see a less touristy side of Japan/NZ. Unfortunately a lot of the information on the web doesn’t really help with that plan. Hopefully this makes it a bit easier for people looking to head into the backcountry.
This website overhaul has been done during weather breaks in an otherwise busy New Zealand guiding season, so there are a few bits and pieces that still need to be finished (and no doubt a few typos or broken links). We’ll get to those over the next few storm days. Unless the surf is good. It’s a hard life. In the meantime, we hope you find something useful or interesting and that we’ve done a better job of explaining what we’re about. And if you do find a glaring problem leave us a comment.
See you in the hills!
John
