By now it was my third trip to Japan and I had everything pretty much dialed. After flying in I dropped most my gear off with the Black Cat baggage service and for 30USD$ I had nothing but my primary snowboard gear (Snowboard, Boots, etc, etc) and was on the Shink bulet train back in a cabin in the mountains of Nagano within 3 hours of landing. I arrive a few days before a storm was about to arrive in late January and hunkered down for the chaos the next 48 hours would provide.

The storm hit heavy starting with around 80cms the first night bringing thigh deep snow to a resort which was all but abandoned as not many people are storm skiers in Japan and prefer sunny days. That left the place pretty much all to us.

As time went on the snow just got deeper and deeper as the storm raged. Soon we were riding on over a meter of new snow and lapping some of the deepest days of my life.

I had come back right at the beginning of this two day snow and by the end we were dealing with stomach deep unconsolidated  new snow which became a bit scary. If you leaned back and fell into the snow it would be a challenge to get back up so we carefully made our way down run after run bell to bell before heading home under clear skies.

It was a beautiful night as the weather cleared and the snow hung off the trees. We would have a night to recoup from the storm skiing and spent our time digging out a route to the cabin getting ready for another day of snowboarding.

The next morning we woke up to a horrific site. The snow load over the garage had caused it to crash down destroying his building and the two cars we had in it. We had not anticipated the weight of the snow load and by waiting a night for things to settle it had buckled under the weight of the storm. The game had now changed and the primary objective was to help out in whatever way we could getting rid of the snow and making sure the cabin didn’t suffer the same fate. It was disheartening to see as Leigh had worked hard to make such a beautiful garage the summer before and the storm had took it out.

It was the craziest week that I’ve ever had traveling with highs and lows. I was only one week deep into a 3 week trip and we were car less and in a remote cabin in the mountains of Nagano.