Matt joins the crew in Japan

After hearing about all the good times Nippon-side, it was only a matter of time before someone went to join the party. Sure enough, Matt Gibson got over there for a two-week trip, here's his report:

From the 19^th February to the 6^th March me and my girlfriend took a wee…very long hop across Eurasia to check in with Barry, Natalie, Lil’ Andy, Chris, Craig and Steve in Japan. So first things first, it was a full unbridled success of a trip!

Some background information on Niseko

‘Niseko’ is actually 4 separate resorts spread on the sides of mount Niseko Annupuri which have over the years all come to function as a single resort. From west to east there is Annupuri, Higashiyama, Hirafu and Hanazono. Hirafu is the biggest and where most people ride, or at least start their day (including us). The 4 areas are very inconveniently joined at the top which, in a safety obsessed place like Japan, means only bad things as the high lift (1 and 2 man deathtraps built in the 70’s) may shut down when the winds get up slightly and you end up stuck where you are; 9 times out of 10, Hirafu! Also, to anyone who has a sensitive nose: The thermal activity in ground that is the source of the Onsens (hot springs) in the area is the cause of the super eggy smell that can be found all over the mountain! It’s particularly bad at the drop for the main kicker in Hirafu! You learn to zone it out, honest!

Tree + powder + happy riders = classic Japan pic

We arrived into Kutchan where the guys/girl were at midnight on the Sunday after a very long day and a half of travelling, but Barry was there to help on the end of the phone as our transfer driver had no idea where he was going despite apparently living in Kutchan?! I have seriously never seen so much snow at resort level. The roads were covered and the snow banks were over 2m high. Impressive. After a hearty late night dinner of toast it was off to sleep for a nice early morning.

Waking up bright and early we were greeted by a lovely bluebird day to start the trip. There had been a dump at the weekend and the guys were raving about the session they’d had over at the little separate Moiwa resort on the Sunday so hopes were high for good snow on the first day. The morning started out with some very ungentle cruising of the lower pistes of Niseko’s Hirafu resort with Andy, Nat and Steve before meeting Barry after lunch who had been working. In only a couple hours we were fully initiated in the ways of Japanese tree runs, cliff/tree drops into powder and random excursions at the end of runs into parks and pipe. Good times. The afternoon was spent further up the mountain at Annupuri peak seeking powder. The Japanese have a bit of a different policy to getting the best runs it seems. You have to earn them. Board/ski off and hike your ass up through the snow for the goods. Not so popular with some individuals! The runs off the back of peak down into the back bowls were awesome. Snow wasn’t great, sun was out so was a bit on the heavy side, but the scenery was well worth it as were the trips off drops and cornices along the way. The comedy of the run came at the bottom with a high speed traverse back into the Annupuri ski grounds which consisted of at least a kilometre or so of high speed one-track riding through tight birch tree woodland and over an ice bridge crossing of the underlying river. The trees were so tightly packed that speed checking was not an option.

Shaky start, but BP pulls it together

The following few days were a bit random. Niseko is famed for cold soft fluffy snow, but instead we had day after day of clear skies and high temperatures, nearly 10C at the bottom of the hill! Initially cruising all over the resort was fine but Niseko isn’t actually that big so lapping the parks was the order of the day.

If Hollister did snowboard adverts....

Niseko has 2 parks, one on Hirafu and one on Hanazono. The Hirafu park is the more chilled park with 3 tabletops, a butterbox, flat box, flat bar, down box and flat down box. The size of everything made it nice and fun to sessions with little chance of binning yourself. Well maybe: Nat took a mighty slam and faceplanted so hard that she smashed her goggle lens! The Hanazono park on the other hand was pretty intense. At the top, a massive halfpipe, then 2 lines through the park. One had 3 big tabletops and interesting rails (down box, up box, down rail, down flat down down box, etc) . The other line was the booter lines! A 5m, a 9m and by the end of my time there a 18m booter. Andy absolutely slayed the line when I lapped the park with him and was dropping cork 720 on the big booter. The local park riders though were even more insane, back 10’s, underflip 10’s, rodeos, just crazy! Barry unfortunately binned himself pretty bad on the 18m booter trying to get some Gopro footage: he ended up overshooting it big style and landing on his back. Then to make the day worse he totalled his board, broke his Gopro case and then deleted all the footage he’d got beforehand. Self proclaimed ‘worst day of the season’. Gutted.

Andy Laird, backside corked 7

We had a day over in the nearby resort of Rusutsu, just the other side of Mount Yotei. Riding Rusutsu was strange: the place is seen loads in the Absinthe films, so everywhere I looked I could see spots hit by the likes of Nicolas Müller or Wolle Nyvelt. The resort is pretty different to Niseko, more like an American resort. There are wide groomed pistes for cruising around on, lots of gullies including the raddest natural halfpipe with so many little natural hits. The place was far easier to get around too, with a comprehensive gondola and high speed quad set up. Because Japanese skiers kept wrapping themselves around trees and dying (at least 1 a week!) you’re not actually meant to go in the trees, with big signs saying that leaving pistes is prohibited….but no ski patrol means I just went in the trees anyway. With the fresh powder there had been the tree runs were amazing if slightly more scary with the tree density probably at least double that of Niseko. The place also has a theme park at its base, a full on one with looping rollercoaster and an underground monorail from the main hotels to the theme park and the slopes. Weird. What was even weirder was the Rusutsu resort hotel….the inside is themed like ‘Ye Olde Europe’…Merry go rounds, talking trees, and clocktowers with singing dancing mannequins. Funnily enough I don’t remember Europe being like that. Is that what the Japanese expect?

Japan: the world leader in surreal shit

After the initial warm start the weather started to behave and we got snow pretty much every day until the end of the trips. Even 5-10cm was a game changer around the resort. Niseko doesn’t groom its pistes that much, preferring to leave them as they are, so the place can be pretty damn chopped up at the end of the day which makes for dicey riding. With fresh snow the place opens up for charging, the trees lines become phenomenal, the drops become landable and the back bowls become worth hiking for! Japanese pow is so light that it kick up with every turn you make. At the top in the open powder fields nothing feels better then high speed turns with pow flying everywhere and faceshot of snow after faceshot. This trait become slightly more freaky in the trees where with every turn you have to wait 2 seconds or so before being able to see again, leaving you to frantically trying to remember where the trees were, how big they were, any low branches, was that drop on the left or the right of the tree ahead, and so on. Freaky but amazing riding to be had! Our second Friday was the best powder day, easily well over 50cm in places. With the dump forecast the whole group got up and over to Hirafu for first lifts. The quality and depth of the snow was immediately shown by some cheeky bitch giving us the biggest pow slash while me, Kat, Chris and Steve were on the quad lift above the piste. WTF. First run we were straight off into the untracked pow of Oni Ridge, a favourite of the guys with everyone bombing through the trees and then heading off massive drops to land in fields of trackless pow before some ragdolling as the board nosedived into the powder. By the third time through Oni Ridge it was a bit more tracked so seemed a good idea to duck the rope and get some turns in the untouched pow of the ‘STRICTLY OFF LIMITS’ area. Shame that ski patrol were waiting just over a blind crest, leading to us all scrambling in bounds and out of sight like a herd of spooked cats. The rest of the day pretty much continued as it had begun,as all of us charged the pow across Hirafu, Hanozono and Annapuri. The tree lines of Miharashi and Swinging Monkey being more favourites for us all, although Swinging Monkey would have been even better if some retarded skier hadn’t been determined to be landed on by me or Steve. Japanese powder is everything you imagine, maybe more!

Lairdy drops

Looking back now that I’m in the UK I can really appreciate how awesome a trip it was and how great the setup with the guys over there was. We really lucked out with the snow conditions. In 2 weeks we got good snow on all but one day, amazing bluebirds on more than one occasion and bottomless powder 3 days in a row at the end. Wins all round.

Still to come: North America trips from Euan Linn and Robin Parkinson. Stay tuned.