Japan

From mid Jan to mid Feb it’s a great time to be in Honshu as you have gotten the snowpack and the snow is still nuking. From the onsens to riding on a meter of unconsolidated snow. When it’s on…..it’s on

Japandemonium Shigakogen Traverse Feb 2016

Snowboarding in the Shigakogen Backcountry
Snowboarding in the Shigakogen Backcountry

The day after riding Yokoteyama we came up with another mission to start from the same zone but do a traverse a few peaks out to go check out a slope that looked nice on Google Maps so we were off the next morning stopping by the local Lawson’s and grabbing our lunch for the day.

Ben payed the 7 dollar double chair bump to get on the highest ski lift in Japan and the accessing point to the beginning of our traverse as the sun started to come over the ridge, grabbing first chair.

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Japandemonium Yokoteyama Darkside Feb, 2016

As time went on and with Ben in town we decided to do a bit of exploring and stumbled across a zone in Yokoteyama where with a little bit of lift riding and a little bit of skinning we would have a nice open north facing bowl to ourselves.

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Japandemonium with no Powder in Sight, Feb 2016

Snowboarding in the Shigakogen Backcountry

By Mid January we were getting desperate for snow. Here I was in Japan for a month and a half in the worst season in many years. By now we were taking people who had planned the trip months in advance to try and find anything worth of riding. After a meter deep storm in put a little bit of snowpack on the sasa covered jungles my friend Ben Starkey came and we went on an adventure around the backcountry of ShigaKogen trying to find a new spot everyday for over a week without any new snow.

By now we had an almost militaristic routine of waking up at 6 for coffee, at the car by 7, Quick stop at Lawson around 8 and being at the resort by 8:45. After the riding it was Onsen followed by sushi train and possibly a quick stop by the grocery store everyday.

 

 

The snowpack was shot as we skinned towards up through the jungles of one of the highest peaks across valley from Yakabitiyama. Day after day we would stare at a cool open slope and Ben and I decided to go on a bush bash to attempt to ride the line making our way through sasa jungles along the way.

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Japandemonium Starting the 2016 season in Japan

When I arrived there was no snow in the lowlands and barely anything in the mountains. Being there for skiing we were hooked on weather forecasts but day after day it was too warm and was falling as rain in the high country and the resorts opened one run at a time over the next few weeks. Both Leigh and I had bought passes to Shiga Kogen and were excited to explore somewhere different. With 18 different small resorts on one pass we were going to ride at an area twice the size of Vail.

Though it was great snow quality we were quite limited and the snowpack was pretty dire needing a few feet to bury the sasa grass (aka bamboo). Day after day we would watch the forecast seeing no foretasted snow and trying to make the best our of what we had.

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Japandemonium Myoko Kogen 2015

MyokoKogenBackcountry
Snowboarding down Myoko Kogen

When the weather clears in can be a rare thing in but by mid February we caught a weather window and decided to drive a few hours over to a volcanic complex known as Myoko Kogen. Being on the coast Myoko may get some of the most snowfall in all of Japan and especially on the main island of Honshu. For days we could see it across the valley and finally decided to go check the crater and hopefully find some powder along the way.

The great thing about Japan is that they sell single lift tickets so with less than 10$ out of pocket we were riding a gondola and chair to just 500 feet below the summit at Suginohara Ski resort, one of 4 on or near the volcano.

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Japandemonium Late Feb 2015

By late February the whole vibe of the resort changed. There were far less tourists and there with that being far less tracks in the backcountry. We had gone from only a few people out there to relatively no one. So with Leigh’s knowledge of the resort and my figuring it out we did hot … Read more

Japandemonium Early Feb 2015

For years I had heard of powder riding in Japan but always decided against it. It was a costly adventure and I could use the budget for months in the Cascades or weeks in Japan so I past it year after year until 2015. While driving to the Australian Splitboard festival with a friend Leigh he kept telling me to take a trip and visit him as he had just moved there. It wasn’t until early January that a friend Mike Cheney hit me up about going out there and within 24 hours flights were booked and I was off on a 3 week trip in an exciting new culture and hopefully good snowboarding.

We arrived to the typical flashing lights you expect and figured out the train system spending a night in Tokyo where we stopped by an Eddie Bauer shop only to find that there was a print of me on the wall. After sharing a night experiencing local ramen in Shinjuku with my friends Adam and Jaime Flemming we were off to Nagano.

After getting situated in the cabin the next morning we arrived to the local ski hill amidst a storm but not like any storm I had ever seen. There was no wind and it was nuking while you could still barely see the sun above us. I would come to find that the snow comes from sucking moisture off the Sea of Japan contrary to the storms we get in N.A.

And man did it ride good. Turns out over two feet had fallen on top of another foot making unreal conditions where every turn was a face shot and the crowds were relatively light.

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