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The Snows of Hokkaido

At home in a foreign ski culture

By Charley Doyle

Being from Whistler, I was prepared to take the “Legendary Snows of Hokkaido” with a grain of salt. But even by our standards, they really get the snow. In December, January and February the cold winds originate in Siberia, pick up their moisture over the Sea of Japan and dump it in copious amounts of cold dry powder over the mountains and rural farmland of Japan’s northern island. The ski resorts of Niseko, two hours from Sapporo, where we spent two weeks, received 3.5 metres of dry white fluff in January alone.

As one might expect they are masters of handling the white stuff. No old dump trucks with blades for their highways department. The main roads are cleared by teams of six-wheel drive, two operator, industrial strength snow blowers that clear the middle of the road, wing back a walking space, cut a vertical bank and blow it all away, all in one pass.

On a more personal level, the average hardware store has dozens and dozens of snow removal implements, from different size shovels, adzes, trimmers and scrapers to whicker brooms and large capacity powder movers. No self-respecting home would have less than half a dozen hand snow tools at the front door, and probably a tracked snow blower as well. The B&B’s sport mini excavators.

Niseko United is comprised of four main resorts, separated by 5-10 km on the road which runs around the base of Mount Niseko An’nupuri. The lifts from these base areas ( all at an elevation between 300 to 400 metres) converge near the summit at 1,308 metres and one ticket gives you the whole ride. I’m told by my translator and resident Hanazono mountain planner that according to a complicated formula involving uphill and downhill capacity, area of terrain and a few other things that I can’t remember right now, the entire show is comparable in skier capacity to Whistler-Blackcomb. I had trouble with that at first but with 1,000 metres of vertical and tons of terrain both in and out of bounds, it definitely is big.

They lack the serious rocky alpine terrain that we’re so famous for but more than make up for it in the trees. The trees are deciduous; mostly birch, maple and some unidentified Japanese varieties, and unlike our coastal coniferous forests, they let all the light and snow in. As well as looking like Japanese brush paintings there’s no tree wells or frozen tree debris. To my delight, the trees are further apart and there are not as many tracks in between them.

The lifts represent every era of the Japanese ski industry. Single chairs, which are basically a fixed pole connecting the cable to a small square of plywood with absolutely no safety equipment, work beside modern detachable quads. The gondolas, while appearing fairly modern, must be pre-snowboard era, as the racks hold neither snowboards nor new age fat skis. They hand out board cozies or nose covers to keep the damage to the inside of the cars and the plexi windows to a minimum. In a pre-detachable attempt to lessen the impact of the chair against the back of the legs, there is one lift where you step on to a moving conveyor belt, move along for a couple of metres then get whisked up softly by the chair. A little disconcerting at first, but totally functional.

In keeping with the Japanese penchant for order, the staging areas for the lifts are raked like Zen Japanese gardens and they don’t seem to require mazes. There’s not a speck of snow on the chairs. The gondolas are swept free of snow and debris every time around.

Large segments of the mountain are opened for night skiing to 9 p.m., which is a huge bonus for local workers as well as jet lagged Canadian skiers needing to stretch their legs after a very, very long day of traveling.

Hirafu Village is the main resort town with a hodge-podge of steep streets, small hotels, houses, B&Bs, condos, eateries, tiny bars, onsens or Japanese baths, real estate offices and all the other necessities. Higashiyama and An’nupuri base areas are primarily occupied by large modern hotels while Hanazono currently sports only temporary restaurant/washroom facilities and snowmobile rentals, as it’s being designed from the ground up by Whistler based Ecosign Mountain Resort Planners. The first buildings of a Whistler style pedestrian village are expected to get into the ground by 2010 . Whistler would make a great sister city to Niseko but St. Moritz beat us to the punch.

The whole area is dominated, when you can see it, by 1,898 metre volcanic peak, Mount Yotei, the Mt. Fuji of Hokkaido . Designated as a national park, it is a popular hiking destination in summer and is climbed and skied by experienced groups in the late winter and spring.

Niseko United was a pioneer in Japan for allowing off-piste or backcountry skiing. At most Japanese ski resorts (and there are many) the ropes signify the end of skiing. Period. End of story.

Niseko decided to follow the lead of forward thinking North American and European areas by allowing access to the backcountry, which in this case is national forest. Governed by a firm set of regulations known as “Niseko Local Rules”, entry to the backcountry is controlled at specific gated points on the ski area boundary.

Pivotal to freeing up the backcountry was local mountaineer Akio Shinya, who has climbed extensively in the Himalayas, China and Pakistan. Shinya-san has been assessing and documenting avalanche conditions in the Niseko area for 20 years. He takes the first gondola up to the top of An’nupuri every morning and together with his protégé, Ohta-san, combines meteorological data, snow pack/avalanche analysis, local knowledge and ski cutting to pronounce the gates opened or closed. He then writes a report which is available on the website http://niseko.nadare.info . He does this all on his own nickel. You may well meet him at one of the backcountry gates where he is happy to advise you in Japanese or English of the day’s problem aspects or probable powder stash locations.

While they experiment on a small scale with fire works and gunpowder, they do little blasting as avalanche control . One of the ski areas is currently consulting with avalanche expert and ex-Whistlerite, Chris Stethem, to see some of the permanently closed areas under the current local rules, opened.

At the risk of offending my Australian friends I must say it was a little disorienting at first to see local Japanese operating the lifts and Aussies riding them. While visiting Whistler, one could be excused for thinking the “Down Under” accent is a Canadian dialect peculiar to lifties and resort front liners, but in Niseko the main tourist stream — as well as a good part of the tourism impetus and infrastructure — comes from Oz.

One of the benefits of this is more translated menus in a land where casually picking up the language is pretty much out of the question. And as I discovered, ordering from those retouched photographic menus is risky business at best. There were occasions, however, when I contemplated dusting off the old Canadian flag and sewing it on my pack. It seems we’re still identifying ourselves by who we aren’t.

I’m told the various ski schools are crying out for English speaking ski and snowboard instructors. If I was in my 20s, possessing a level one or better and looking for an incredible riding experience with a large cultural upside, a winter in Niseko would be my call.