JAPAN GRABS - Hakuba Blog 2013 / 2014

Last Sunday at Happo
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Early in the morning the winds were howling and no lifts were moving. Right now, there’s only the gondola and the kokusai lift that will take you up to the upper mountain and both were on hold. I had a feeling the gondola lineup was going to be bonkers so I parked near the Kokusai lift and there was only a small lineup of 20 people. Now, the Kokusai lift is the poorer choice to the gondola because it takes forever, AND you have to take an additional lift to get up to the gondola station level. Oh, and you’re exposed to the elements too - that sucks. However, on this day it was the correct choice as the gondola still hadn’t started moving when we had reached the top the slow way. In the lineup I ran into a bunch of friends and it was easy to pass the time catching up with each other.
  We started off doing some laps of the lower mountain which was fun, but I was feeling tentative. It was powder, but there was still the longer vegetation sticking out and I did not want to rip my board some new guts. I have a track record at Happo of riding new boards and always hitting that lone rock in early season….yet when I’m conservative and ride the rock board, I don’t hit a thing!
Some guys getting it good down low:

Today was good, but I was glad when we saw the Alpen lift to the top moving and we headed up there.
The lineup at the Alpen quad:

As we were going up, the first guys started coming down,ravaging the Usagidaira run.
The first guy was a snowboarder, which was cool, followed by 10 skiers.
He shralped it well! But you know,  he had to have been lining up since arriving at the top, and wouldn’t have gotten the three runs we had.

I decided to head to Tanuki to get some fresh tracks, but the wind was so crazy I had to straightline the top. It was….okay.
Heading to Tanuki:

We then headed down to Skyline, arriving just as Patrol were opening it. It was sick! The lips on the cat tracks were perfect launch pads and I had a stellar run of a method/back 1/ back 3. Next run, did the same but the back 3 was a back 345 and I ate it under the lift. I did get some cheers though so it wasn’t for naught.
Then, after lunch I did some exploring, finding some untouched spots that got better and better each run. Have you ever had a day when you call last run, but it’s so good that you have to do another? That was my final two hours of riding. It was such a good day…and it’s still so early in the season! Normally, we get a big opening dump, then nothing til Christmas/New Year’s.
Next Saturday looks like another pow day too!

Tech talk:
I have to say that the Juice Wagon was amazing. The fat nose and fat waist are perfect for plowing through chunder, and of course it floats great. The high kicks really help with freestyle and when I was spinning, it did not feel like I was on a powder board. My Rossignol Experience just became expendable.
And I need to do something about this GoPro battery - I only get about 8 minutes of footage before it runs out!

Here’s a new edit…from last Sunday

I wish my groomers were like that.

Epic. The pow looks amazing already. Those of you in Hakuba for the season are soo damn lucky!

Those that stand still, get the obligatory powder shower!!!!!

Awesome stuff Marc! Getting me sooo hyped for February

Just got to Happo…..another 60cm today!!!!!

omygoodness… i wish whistler is getting that kind of snow

Merry Christmas everyone!

Just an update from a few days ago. Happo had gotten a dump and I went up early…but the guy I was going to ride with was stuck in a traffic jam behind an accident. If you guys are driving here, always watch out when coming out of a tunnel - those are definitely danger spots.
So, instead of waiting around, I went for a couple of warm up runs…but going up Kokusai lift, I saw that nobody had touched the Kokusai run!!! The in run has a flat spot that you need to straightline, but I thought that with my Juice Wagon, I wouldn’t have any problems if I went fast enough. Well, luckily for me, there were two skiers heading down the run before me, making a nice track
I did have to unstrap and walk for 5 minutes but then I managed to get enough speed to take me to the start of the steep section.
Man, it was deep. Easily knee-deep.

Actually, it was too deep! I had to basically go straight to get enough speed to not wobble and fall. Check out the video:

After that run, I met up with stuck-in-traffic man and D. We spent the day hunting for pow and trying to avoid the whiteouts. At one point on Skyline, I couldn’t see a thing! Unfortunately for me, the next run, I misjudged my speed and dropped 3 meters onto a flat. I sprained my ankle but was able to ride the rest of the day, in spite of the chop. The next day, however, was not fun. The doc told me to rest a week but we’ll see how it goes tomorrow It should snow tonight and all tomorrow. I’ve got some photos from a friend that I want to share, so that will be posted up soon.

Tech Talk: If you’re coming to Japan in storm weather aka prime pow pow weather, think twice about your super cool fire iridium lenses in your goggles. In whiteout conditions, well, you can’t see anything…but in near whiteout weather, a pink/persimmon or gold lens could save your day. I have a pair of Dragon Rogues (that I won here on Boardworld!) with a pink ionized lens that I save for storm days. Keep an eye out for Airblaster goggles - they have the mirror on the inside lens and a clear outer lens, so you don’t scratch up your mirror when you’re wiping the snow away from the last faceshot. That one is called the Baker lens. Apart from that, usually you get a spare lens with goggles and that cheap one is usually the best for bad weather - so throw it in your suitcase, just in case!

Woah, too much snow to get to Hakuba! Just arrived at my local resort and it is DUMPING!!! Viz is zero, pow is deep!

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Been riding the last four days and I am exhausted. I had a couple of good days at my local resort in Toyama. It was storming hard and I just shot some photos with my iphone in a sealline case like this:

It’s pretty good as I don’t need to worry about snow getting on the phone and while photos aren’t as clear, for a storm day they’re good enough.
I was riding with Masato, a local shop rider and he was nice enough to jump where I told him to jump.

Bad viz method

Some slashes and sprays

powder 360

some more sprays

back 3 melon

a better method

I wondered if I could make it prettier in photoshop, but this was all I got:

I experimented with two types of shooting styles: just the one shot photo (for which the iphone lag was non-existent) and also just shooting video and doing screen grabs. I assume the latter results in lower quality but haven’t gotten around to trying both on a nice day.

Damn, all that snowww

Is that Masato in the pics or you?

Masato has a sweet lookin Method!!!!

Looks killer!

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Dec. 29th, 2013 at Cortina Kokusai

First day of the year at Cortina, which used to be a hidden gem, but is now well-known to all as powder heaven. The day before was better apparently, and while we had new snow, yesterday’s tracks weren’t fully filled in. I shouldn’t complain though - it was powder and it was bluebird.
Cortina has amazing tree skiing in bounds and out of bounds too. If you go there, though, and want to drop off the back, please read the warning sign and follow the rules. Having avalanche safety gear is essential and just because you see a group of ten Japanese riders going in without backpacks (like I did today), it doesn’t mean squat if you get into trouble…or someone near you gets into trouble. Also, for those of you with travel insurance, better read the fine print to see if it still covers you outside of the resort boundaries.
Anyways, on to the powder!
Let’s start it off with some classic Cortina shots:

jealous, anyone? 

I believe this is called “the white room”

slashes still look good in black & white

Normally, with a sequence, you need to choose the best shot out of the lot. It’s especially difficult when the rider is doing a line which has a number of epic stills. Setting up for this shot, I didn’t bother hiking up to a traverse track two meters above me as I 1)couldn’t be bothered and 2) thought I would just get the action before he got even close to it. As you know, having tracks in a shot is a big downer and what do ya know? the ones I couldn’t crop out are a bit of a shame. Normally, they’d be deletes but the powder wave is pretty gnarly. Check it out:

Does Cortina seem familiar to you?
You guys may recognize it from my past photos, like this one, the winner of a Boardworld photo contest:

Anyways, it’s definitely worth a visit if you come to Hakuba for a holiday!