4 x mountains, 3 x countries in 4 x weeks

Ok this kicks off tomorrow.  Going to be a lot of fun ahead.  To give you an idea:

Canada - Jan 19 - Feb 1 - Whistler/Blackcomb (inlc cat tours)
USA - Feb 3-5 - Crystal Mountain & Stevens Pass
Japan - Feb 8 - 15 Myoko - Suginohara, Akakaru Onsen, Akakura Kanko

So, I’ve consolidated Whistler & Backcomb into “1 x mountain”, and the same with all of the Myoko “mountains” but hey, this will be an interesting trip nonetheless.

Let me know what you think of my trip, vids will be updated regularly

EDIT: FYI my rig for the trip is:

Jones 2016 Mtn Twin 161W
2014 Burton Cartel Bindings matched to 2016 Burton Ions
Quiksilver Forever Goretex Jacket + DC Servo 15k pants

I’m aiming to get through the entire trip in the same gear.  Let’s go!

Sounds like a plan!!!!!

Look forward to seein the outcome!!!!! ??

Looking forward to this thread, and having you over in Whistler!

Travel safe and see you on the other side! ? ?

Sounding epic, look forward to the updates

Just arrived to Myoko from Hakuba this morning…here til next Friday the 5th so will just miss you. It was raining when we got here but is currently puking….let’s hope it stays like this all afternoon and until tomorrow morning!

You could luck into a nice day at Stevens on Thursday Hughman. Hope the FL doesn’t spike

No Fernie :(.

Either way, Stevens looks awesome, make sure you go to the German town down the road, it’s awesome!!!

Post lots of pics

Finally home, epic trip.  I’ll post up a review over the weekend!

Ok so it’s over! 4 weeks of touring and I’m finally nearing sobriety levels appropriate with writing a review. Wow.

Here we go:

Started out 19th Jan, Mel-Syd-Yvr. First things first, Air Canada may be the cheapest way to get from Melbourne to Vancouver in the straightest line but that doesn’t mean you should do it.  Off the bat, a 1hr flight delay followed by awful food (trust me, it can actually get this bad), a questionable midnight snack (unlike QANTAS, they turn on ALL of the cabin lights and prod you awake to receive your dry bread roll with polony) and IFE that looks like it was designed by a monkey. Never again - maybe

Anyway, we arrived safely, got our boards from the Oversized Baggage crew and met our Whistler shuttle team. Great folks and within 20 minutes we were on our way.  After clearing customs by 8:00am, we were on the Sea-to-Sky HWY by 9:30am and hitting the middle of Whistler Village by 11:00am.  Nice work!

We checked into our accomm at the Town Plaza Suites (Bear Lodge). After hearing nightmare stories about late night noise from the Village Stroll, we had requested a room facing the other side of the building.  Our apartment was pretty nice! 5 minute walk from the lifts, single bedroom with a living room and kitchen for around $140/night - pretty good! And it had a washing machine and dryer - essential for keeping the thermals sorted. We will be back!

First Tracks
So, first day on the slopes we hit up Whistler Gondola at 8am and pretty much walked straight on. This became our norm time for starting as it all went to custard by 8:15. Small things matter.  We hit up Big Red and smashed that most of the day as the dumps from the previous 2 days still meant lots of freshies!!

After that we headed over the other side waiting for the alpine to open…

Eventually we got the goods and made our way to a favorite viewing spot:

It was Game On for next 12 days!

The Black Side of the Comb

We actually spent a LOT of time over on Blackcomb. When it came to weekends and every man and their dog was uploading on Creekside and subsequently killing the Big Red Chair.  Or smashing the Whistler Gondola until well into 10am territory….however, there’s a quiet little gondola out the front of the Pan Pac.  It’s half the size of the Whistler Gondola (4 people) and takes you only 1/3 of the way up but holy shit, it is the introduction to Blackcomb aka where you grow some balls.  From here you grab the Excelerator chair and all of a sudden you are in the middle of a mountain steeper and genuinely more hardcore than the regular runs of Whistler.  We would typically go from here to either the Solar Coaster or Jersey Cream chairs and smash them, slowly but surely building up our speed without the beginner crews of the Emerald Chair in the way.

I have to say that a few days of Blackcomb made me a much better rider - and I found this validated when I would ride Whistler.  Starting most days on Backcomb in the mornings and then finishing in the afternoons on Whistler via the P2P, Backcomb is an unforgiving bitch of a mountain but stick with it. You will be rewarded.  I found this to be so much more evident when I got to Japan - but more on that later.

Oh and one other thing to mention about Backcomb - purely subjective of course: 7th Heaven Bowl is amazing and kicks Symphony’s (almost perfect) butt! Just my 2 cents of course…seriously though they are both pretty awesome and “peek” at each other when you’re one the other mountain - pretty cool!

As I mentioned previously, we cut the Whistler stage of the trip early by a few days to head down to Seattle for work.  Quick 40 minute flight across the border and we arrived in the rainy city.  Gotta say I love Seattle and have done since I first headed there in 2010.  If you like your IPAs strong and bitter, this is the place to be, with great seafood.  Over the road from our office near the Safeco Field ballpark is the Elysian Brewing Company - one of the best PNW breweries going.  Needless to say several liquid lunches were on the cards:

Once I had wound up work activities for the week, we had the options of Mt Baker or Stevens Pass.  Keeping an eye on the forecast there was over 12” inbound on the following day.  We had one full day left in Seattle and this was going to be it.  Car hire booked - check.  Boards waxed prior to leaving Whistler - check.

The following morning it was absolutely bucketing down in Seattle, looking good!  Then my wife informed me that she needed to see the physio. Whistler, in addition to 3 days of carting a backpack around Seattle, had apparently triggered an old back injury.  What could I do?  I was a broken man.  Half of me was saying I can sneak out and grab the hire car and be back by the time she had done a day in the day spa being massaged back to health.  But I knew deep down it was a shitty thing to do.  And also some of the resorts were reporting wind hold.  And I’ll be back another time.  So we parked it for the trip and flew back home the following day.  Still an awesome place to visit along the way.

Been a few weeks but finally got around to posting up the Japan leg.  So I literally got home on the Sunday, chucked my gear in the wash, went to work on the Monday (a little distracted), came home, grabbed my clean gear and then met my friend Pete at the airport that night.  Sat in the lounge, smashed a few beverages to enable the full 9 hrs sleep to Tokyo.  Flying Shitstar (points booking) you’re not missing anything by sleeping.  On the plus side, we did have the foresight to book exit row seats.

Woke up when we hit Narita, this was my first time in Japan.  First impressions, crowded but efficient.  The train system took a little bit of getting used to (having just woken up) but it was pretty seamless.
Took the Narita-Tokyo, then the bullet train to Nagano, then the old clanger to Myoko:

As we approached Nagano the weather started changing from the 20c that was Tokyo and we began seeing more and more snow.  Getting pretty pumped by this stage. We bumped into a few Canadians who were swapping direction with us at Myoko, visibly pissed off that they were going home that day. “It’s absolutely puking down” was the general comment.  Awesome.

All up we landed in Narita just after 8am and were at our lodging by 2:30pm. Once we got to Myoko we saw what they meant. This was our cab dropping us at our lodge and it had only been dumping for a few hours:

More than happy to let it build up overnight, we checked out the village of Akakura Onsen, which is actually the main village for the various snowfields in Myoko Kogen.  Now let me start by saying that I haven’t been to any other snowfield in Japan so this is a purely isolated review.  Akakura Onsen is very small and that was my favorite part. It’s built around 2 main streets in a “T” setup with a handful (literally) of bars/pubs that also served meals, maybe even less straight eateries (a couple of ramen houses and barbecue/grill places) and that’s pretty much it.  Downtown:

We didn’t see many Westerners in proportion to locals both in town and on the hills and I found this really refreshing - completely different.  One of the local bars had a Kim Jong-Un vs Barack Obama arm-wrestling machine.  Obama always won:

You basically have four “main” resorts:
Akakura Onsen - beginner-friendly, lots of green runs.  It is the closest to the village (2 minute walk) and offers night skiing on the main green run.
Akakura Kanko - “Akakan” - a bit more diverse in terms of terrain and located to the left of Onsen. Around a 5-10 minute walk to the gondola.
Ikenotaira - seemed to be based mainly around terrain park riding with a pretty narrow profile and not a lot of variety.
Suginohara - my favorite, “Sugi” had some great runs and this was our first day on the snow, the day after we arrived following 40-60cm of fresh. Around a 30 minute / $5 bus ride each way.  Pretty nice.  There was a black run (bear in mind none of the black runs were anything more than a reasonable blue run in Whistler) called Super Giant which was basically a bowl which at the middle point had us all around chest deep in dry powder.  Quite a few were getting stuck on the first run (myself included) and it took a bit of a hike to get across to the less deep parts.  After that however it was a great one to tear up.

We spent our second day at Akakan which was great. Unknowingly it was a Japanese public Holiday so it was fairly packed - within the context of Myoko though…still no real lift lines to speak of and you could still find some quiet runs.

While we were having a beer at Akakan, I noticed across the valley, there was another mountain with runs cut into it:

After checking it out via the Myoko Snowsports crew (small team of Aussies who can sort out lift passes from their office near the post office) we were told that it was the joint Tangram/Madarao field - around a 40 minute / $70 cab fare each way.

Both Tangram and Madarao straddle a mountain. They are interconnected and accessed by a single pass although you can purchase a single-resort pass if you really want.
This place felt like “real Japan” to me (whatever that means).  We seemed to be the only Westerners here and not much English was spoken, however it was well-signposted (in colours anyway) and we were able to navigate the place fairly easily.  Even for a Saturday it wasn’t very busy and the variety of terrain was very cool.  Having said that I tweaked my knee early on in the day and sat out the rest of the day in the dining hall with some random locals, drinking cans of Sapporo while I waited for Pete and our cab home.

My overall impressions of Myoko were really positive. Of the few Westerners that we met, the repeated comment was that it’s a hidden gem and while it is becoming more popular, it has nothing on the crowds of nearby Hakuba.  I would say that if that is the case, then Madarao is the hidden jewel in the crown. Sshhh.