Hokkaido: Skiing Japow!

On January 2nd (yes, I'm that far behind on the blog) I began a four flight, 24 hour journey from my quaint town of Lijiang, China to the city of Sapporo on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido. I was meeting up with high school friends Derek and Will (also a Dartmouth '25) to ski Japan's finest powder for one week.

My journey involved an overnight layover in the Chinese city of Jinan. I slept on a cold airport bench for the worst three hours of sleep of my life. This was between flight two and three.

At least the views into Hokkaido (flight four) were nice.

I met up with Will (right) and Derek (left) in the Sapporo train station. We immediately grabbed some food. It's always so fun and such a blessing when new people drop in on this adventure. This was shaping up to be an amazing week.

Early the next morning we stuffed ourselves with all of our ski gear into the hotel elevator and began our journey to Kamui Ski Links, our first resort of the trip.

A dominant theme in this crazy week of powder skiing was logistical movement. Over the six nights we were together we stayed in five different hotels. We took, in total, seven trains, seven taxis, and seven buses (one unsuccessfully - more on that later). With four bags per person. And we skied every single day.

We arrived in Asahikawa, a smaller city that functions as a hub for the surrounding ski mountains.

We dropped our bags at the hotel, hopped on the Kamui resort shuttle, and we were off for our first lift of the trip! We took a train from Sapporo to Asahikawa, and then a bus from Asahikawa to Kamui and still got five hours of skiing in!

It took about two runs on groomed trails to warm up before we were ducking ropes and dodging trees. Will and Derek got themselves stuck in a ravine they had to hike out of. Another dominant theme of this ski trip was collective poor decision making and risk assessment skills. Keep reading for a couple more examples of this stellar frontal lobe activity.

That night we celebrated our first day of skiing with some of the best apres-ski food one can hope for: warm ramen.

The next day we took on Asahidake, a 7,500 foot volcano with a single ropeway and all backcountry runs. We went in extremely excited for this new experience. This was not like any ski resort we had skied before. When we arrived we noticed the ample signage warning of avalanche risk and informing us that the mountain has no ski patrol since it is all backcountry skiing. We looked around some more and noticed how every other skier and snowboarder had avalanche packs and beacons. We considered all of the information before us and then got on the ropeway.

Luckily there was one groomed path down which, true to form, we took for the first run, and then tried to avoid at all costs on every subsequent run. The snow was by far the best powder any of us had ever skied. It was the single best day of skiing I'd ever had.

At the base we met two fellow Americans: Jack and his step-brother Will. They were also skiing off the groomed trail with no avalanche gear. So naturally we did a few laps together.

Then it was apres-ski time.

This time with wagyu. I had the best skiing and the best steak of my life in the same day! Japan was rapidly ascending the country power rankings.

The next day we took an extremely early train over to Furano, a much bigger resort.

We dropped our bags, suited up, and hit the slopes. No rest for the wicked.

The scenery was stunning.

We explored the mountain until close, and then piled into a tiny Japanese taxi with our skis on the roof.

Our hotel in Furano had an onsen. This was a major development in the apres-ski routine. Onsens are essentially public baths full of various hot and cold tubs and naked Japanese men. We were big fans of the onsen culture.

In the morning we fueled up with this (free!) breakfast of maybe 350 calories. It felt like a joke. The yogurt was so shallow it wasn't even the depth of one third of the curved part of my spoon. It felt like diving headfirst into a kiddie pool. If this is what it takes to have the longest life expectancy in the developed world I'm taking a Lou's Big Green and three years off my life any day of the week.

The early morning views were magnificent, so that (plus two Snickers) improved my mood.

On our second day we naturally got a little more adventurous. We popped our skis off and hiked around Furano's backcountry area. We were also blessed with a beautiful blue sky day of skiing.

We skied from open through night skiing. We decided to spice up the limited night skiing terrain by racing down the mountain without turning. Will won both times. I suspect bodyweight may have been a contributing factor...

On our third day we were blessed with over a foot of powder overnight. It was magnificent.

We wanted to capitalize on this extra cushioning, so we searched for the biggest cliff we could find and jumped off of it as many times as possible. It turns out that number was twice for Derek before he double ejected, once for Will before he went headfirst into the snow, and three times for me before I broke my rental pole. Japow!

Here's a video compilation if you're curious:

We got in a half day of skiing, and then hopped on the last bus heading back to Sapporo. The bus made it about 20 minutes before the driver pulled over and informed us the bus had been canceled due to snow on the highway. Tough.

The trains still worked though, so we made it to Sapporo nonetheless.

We ate at this adorable curry house with five total seats for our final dinner together.

The next day was our final day of skiing. With no onsen the night before, the five consecutive days of skiing and limited sleep was starting to catch up with us. We even stretched for the first time.

We saved some of the best for last. Teine Mountain was used in the 1972 Winter Olympics because it has some of the steepest runs in Japan. And we got another foot of powder overnight!

We skied ourselves to near vegetative states. By the last runs on Teine I could barely stand upright. Great way to end it. We dropped off our rental gear and just like that our crazy week of skiing was complete. Four different mountains in six days of skiing. Will and Derek were perfect ski travel companions. Everyone was on board with 6:30am wakeups and trains and buses galore. I want to especially shoutout Derek for going to my house in Hanover and bringing me my snowpants, shell, long johns, socks, goggles, mittens, you name it. Legend.

This trip was a resounding success, which I think surprised everyone. Or at least me. We never once did a group call to discuss the trip. We didn't have a hotel booked until about a week and a half in advance (shoutout Derek and Will for booking all of the hotels). And other than one canceled bus which was out of our control and didn't cost us any skiing time, the logistics were shockingly flawless.

To give you a sense of what we were dealing with, on our last day of skiing we woke up at 6:30am, took a train and then a bus to get to the ski mountain, skied almost a full day, took the bus back to the train, dropped the rental gear, got back on the train, got our luggage from the hotel, took a different train to the airport, and then Will flew back to America and Derek and I flew to Tokyo and then took two more trains to finally get to our apartment. I think it was the longest day of my life.

Thank you to Derek and Will for making the long voyage out to Japan. Derek and I still have two more weeks together in Japan. Stay tuned to see what we get up to!

And as a little reward for those who have made it this far, here's a 20 second skiing compilation:

From the vault:

The Gondora.