Japan Hokkaido - Niseko

Looking for big Monday

by JIM DARBY

We're away. You know the feeling, anticipation finally becomes reality. The plane's half full. We're happy, the cabin crew are chirpy and we toast the trip. I spill red wine all over my pants. Memo to self: dark pants when travelling, even for the away games.

I knew this would be good. I had the company, the terrain and the snowcover. But all the way over, I promised myself I would warm up on some groomers, get some leg strength before I hopped into the powder.

As fate would have it, I was accosted before even one run by Falls Creek skier Tom Costa and he led us straight to the trees, off the gondola and into Miharashi Fields. Terrific, here comes another knee operation.

Eight turns didn't quite match the eight runs on the groomed I had in mind, but what's this? Snow as light as fairy dust … I'm looking at the gaps, not the trees, and it's all falling into place. Costa is a half a mountain away, playing in the powder on his fat skis, but I seem to find some form of rhythm, until my summer legs yield and scream for a break.

Get used to it.

Costa bows and disappears into the mist, looking for his morning coffee. Ross, our very own Niseko regular, takes over as guide and leads us into Strawberry Fields in Hanazono.

We get a couple of sunny breaks and riding Hanazono #1 lift gives a clear view of the lines we'd just skied and the options ahead. It reads like a relief map with skiers and boarders breaking through the camouflage of the trees. Strawberry Fields forever.

I'm here with Ross Lipson the musician, Warren Grant the world traveller and Paul ‘Junior' Dangerfield, the fossil hunting, surfing, chook footer.

A Kiwi woman has a go at us in the lunch hut: “Why do you Aussies always go away on boys' trips? Are you afraid of women or something?”

This is my first boys' trip in a decade, but there's no prospect of victory in the reply, so we talk about the skiing.

Our days fall into a sensational rhythm, early starts, new turns for adventure or familiar terrain skied again to enjoy the taste, then a stop for those sensational Japanese mountain lunches, more turns for the afternoon, a few beers, eat street in Kutchan for dinner, a good night's sleep without the wakefulness of altitude and we're skiing again.

Until Saturday afternoon that is, when the steady snowfall of the last few days turns into a thumping, dumping blizzard; fresh tracks on every run, even over the run just skied.

When we call it a day, we find the weather has closed the roads and even stopped the shuttles, so we walk back to the cottage, turn up the heater and watch the blizzard go by.

Sunday morning and the storm has shut Hokkaido down – the airports, the highways and, closer to home, the ski lifts. It's howling. So we have an easy morning and stroll up to the village.

The roads are nuts. The boxy little Japanese 4WDs are scooting around easily enough, but then a big 45-seater bus comes up the hill and slows. Inertia hauls him back; he's wanting to go forwards but all of a sudden he's going backwards, in an out-of-control lock, wheels spinning forward and the bus slipping backwards, eventually pulling up in a snow bank.

An ambulance drifts by at about 30 km/h singing a warning that's more a melody than a siren, its pilot and co-pilot straight as dolls in the front seat. It's a day for the onsen and the eating and maybe a movie if you can work the remote controls.

Monday comes with a sunny sky and we're lining up at the Hirafu gondola along with a couple of hundred Japanese, Australians, Kiwis, Russians and Canadians. Plenty of tracks for all, but all want the first of them.

We reach the top of the gondola and head for the Swinging Monkey chair and here's an irony. At home the thing that can stop lifts running is a delay while snow is pulled on to the load area. Here we're held up for half an hour while they clear the snow away.

Eventually we're in Hanazono, waist deep in Strawberry Fields and bouncing through the birches between Stairway to Heaven and Legends of Shinya.

Here's the thing about powder. It's about being in the moment, utterly absorbing. It's a cocoon from any other reality, no thoughts of work, of what's for lunch, of troubles with traffic or problems of politics. It's as absorbing as child's play and in snow like this, it is child's play.

We were aiming for a hike to the summit, but it wasn't going to open on this day, as it turned out, it wasn't going to open this week, but there was plenty else on offer.

One day we found ourselves in Moiwa, the small field on the far end of Niseko, beyond Annupuri.

Naturally, as you'd expect in this powder paradise, it had been snowing all night and was still drifting peacefully down.

I'm in trouble with the boys for writing about Moiwa, but they're easily bought. Where the Hirafu gondola had a crowd in the hundreds for first tracks, there are 16 cars in the Moiwa car park and 20 people waiting for the quad chair; that's five chairs worth if you want to look at it that way.

We skied the main bowl, beneath the lift and wider on the Shirakaba Rinken (white birch) for sensational tree skiing with those same deep turns. Then we made the short hike from the top of the quad and skied the back bowls.

It was about a 40-minute turnaround, up the lift, out the back and then into the bowls – steep and open at the top, tight and turny through the trees ; endless options in bottomless snow.

Ross: Let's go out really wide this time, we haven't skied that bowl.
Junior: If it's crap snow it'll be your fault.
Ross: Listen Junior, even if it's crap it'll be good.
Junior: It was crap, it was only chest deep.

BUT WE WERE still looking for the summit and the next day might just bring it. Monday morning, we stepped out of Niseko Cottage and the clouds had vanished. Mt Yotei filled the landscape to the south and straight up the street Mt Niseko Annupuri loomed large; we could even make out the cat's tracks on the slope, corduroy two passes wide in preparation for the pilgrimage.

We made our way up the mountain. The last lift to ride is the King Lift #4, a rickety little single chair that would give a fat bum a hard time and delivers you to the summit gate.

No time for wasting, skis over the shoulder, a studious glance from ski patrol and we're through the gate and climbing the ladder of steps already plugged into the corduroy. The first steep stretch is earn-your-turns hard work, but once you reach the shoulder of the peak, it's a gentle climb to the summit.

And up here is a United Nations of skiers and boarders with Japanese, French, Dutch, Russian and five accents of English bubbling away in the crowd; universal excitement over the runs ahead and the views in hand.

I've seen some wonderful mountain views in my time. I've seen the NZ west coast from the Franz Josef Glacier, I've seen numerous European nations from the Grands Montets above Chamonix and I've seen the beautiful Ovens Valley from Feathertop and the Kiewa from Bogong. This one is as good as any.