It seems that my
golden time of winter long travel is slowly vanishing…
Jobs, partners and
different personal projects made me chose not travel for 3 months straight.
To compensate, I
figured I would treat myself by revisiting one of my favorite country on
Earth : Japan.
It has been 3 years
since the last time I visited Japan. I thought it would be great to get my
share of deep pow. I left Montreal with my girlfriend Amélie, my Dad and for
the first time joining me on my ski trip, my little sister, Audrey.
We took off for a 3
weeks journey with not much plan ahead.
We had a reservation
for the first night upon our arrival and a car rented for the length of our
trip. Snow will make up our plans.
After what was
probably my crappiest international flight (thanks to American Airlines), we
landed on Hokkaido. After picking up all our luggage, we eventually realized we
just miss the shuttle that was supposed the bring us to our hotel, the Wing
International.
That hotel is my
favorite because it is cheap, it has (usually a shuttle bus…) and you can
reserve it online, which is far from being the case of the majority of the
accommodation in Japan.
After trying to get a
taxi big enough to fit all our luggage, we gave up and hop on the city bus. We
were dropped off a couple corners away from our hotel and walked the distance
before collapsing in our bed.
The following morning,
Yoshi, came and dropped us the car at our hotel. He rents used cars for much
cheaper than the car rental company.
We decided to get away
from the crowd and made our way north towards the city of Asahikawa. This city
of about 350 000 inhabitants lay north of Sapporo and got a couple of good
options around.
It is quite great to
see how the Japanese are living with the winter instead of trying to fight it.
The streets and the sidewalk are usually covered with snow and ice, the huge
snowbanks spread all over the towns don’t seem to bother anyone and shoveling
the white gold seems just a regular common activity just like shopping for your
grocery is.
For our first day out,
we drove towards Etanbetsu pass, on the road 72 northwest from Asahikawa. We
were a bit worried about the depth of the snowpack, but those worries quickly
disappeared when we saw the huge snowbanks that were waiting for us!
It was snowing heavily
and with the warm temperatures, the snow was a bit wet. We took off and skied a
nearby slopes just about 10 minutes from the parking lot. There was about a
foot or two of fresh! We got a few laps in with sometimes the sun breaking
through the storm!
It is always a great
feeling to start a trip with some faceshots and bottomless JaPow!!
We spend the next 2
days in Kamui Ski Links, just outside Asahikawa.
This resort certainly
has arguably the best policy about backountry in Japan!
With a great back bowl
where you can lap ‘’at your own risk’’ untouched powder all the way to a
traverse that brings you back to the lifts, it is quite a great option!
There is certainly the
inbound terrain that is great but the backbowl usually preserves the snow much
longer due to the traverse and the lack of clear instruction to indicate where
to enter!
Everyone were getting
great laps until my sister realized one of the screw of her binding was getting
pulled off of her skis. She put her fat skis aside and ended up rocking her
mid-fat to end the day. We got directed to Shugakuso, on the road 90 in
Asahikawa to get her ski repair.
We couldn’t have
gotten a better pointer! That shop is just awesome. It has everything one skier
could ask for including inserts to fix that problem! They fixed her skis on the
spot and 30 minutes after we walked in the store, we left with her ski repaired for 10$!
We’ll probably make it
back to Etanbetsu pass tomorrow to check out some options that we didn’t reach
due to the poor visibility of the other day.
Damn it’s great to be
back in Japan!
evans
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