G'day Pugs,
Hope everyone is having a great season. Finally my season starts in earnest tomorrow as I head out to Japan again. This season I'll be out there for almost a month, from the 16th January to the 12th February. I'll have 2 weeks in Hokkaido and then 12 days in Tohoku. I'm excited to get back to Hokkaido as I didn't ski there last season (just did Tohoku). I have 2 groups coming out, a new group of 4 from Colorado with my guide Jeremy and then a group of 3 with 2 guys from California who have done many trips with me before and then David from Pugski (@UGASkiDawg ) who last skied with me in 2018 in Chile. So, a great crew.
I'm flying out of Denver on the direct Denver to Tokyo Narita flight with United. That's a really convenient way of getting to Tokyo. I'll be staying overnight in Narita (not many flights from Narita to Sapporo after 4pm), so I'll catch up on my sleep and then arrive in Chitose around noon. Then I'll grab our vans from Nippon Rent-a-Car and settle in for one night in Chitose at the ANA Crowne Plaza. Everyone is scheduled to meet at breakfast on the morning of the 18th and then we head to Otaru for our first 5 nights.
On the 23rd January we'll head north to Furano and stay there for 5 nights. As always, we'll be following the weather in each of our zones and hitting up the resort or backcountry area with the most favorable weather report. I know this season, Japan in general has been off to a very slow start. I'm hoping that when we get there, the taps will finally turn on properly. It's a tough call and looking at the weather reports with only light snow in the forecast, it's easy to get despondent about the situation, but I've skied boot top deep snow in Hokkaido before when the forecast has only called for 3cm's, so I'm always optimistic that there will be more snow than they are calling for.
We'll see. Either way, we'll have a fun adventure and enjoy what we can find. The trip officially ends back in Chitose on the 28th but this year we are going on a new adventure ourselves that I'm very excited about. For the first time, we are going to head south in Hokkaido to explore the Hakodate area where there are a couple of under the radar resorts. Then we'll drop off the remaining van in Hakodate and take the bullet train under the ocean to Aomori to start our Tohoku adventure on the 1st of February (I'll post a separate TR for Tohoku). That should be a pretty cool experience.
When we've visited Hakodate, that should tick off the bigger resorts in southern Hokkaido. There are 104 ski resorts listed for Hokkaido alone, but I try and focus on the resorts that have more than a 300m vertical. There are a ton of small areas that are just small hills that I'm unlikely to try and ski. There's a few further north past Asahikawa that I need to hit up and then that's most of the bigger resorts covered in Hokkaido. I'd be pretty happy to tick all the big ones off. Then I think the focus can shift to Honshu and heading south from Tohoku, which we are starting to do.
So, hopefully the next post will be from Japan. Until then! Wish me luck.....
- Matt
Hope everyone is having a great season. Finally my season starts in earnest tomorrow as I head out to Japan again. This season I'll be out there for almost a month, from the 16th January to the 12th February. I'll have 2 weeks in Hokkaido and then 12 days in Tohoku. I'm excited to get back to Hokkaido as I didn't ski there last season (just did Tohoku). I have 2 groups coming out, a new group of 4 from Colorado with my guide Jeremy and then a group of 3 with 2 guys from California who have done many trips with me before and then David from Pugski (@UGASkiDawg ) who last skied with me in 2018 in Chile. So, a great crew.
I'm flying out of Denver on the direct Denver to Tokyo Narita flight with United. That's a really convenient way of getting to Tokyo. I'll be staying overnight in Narita (not many flights from Narita to Sapporo after 4pm), so I'll catch up on my sleep and then arrive in Chitose around noon. Then I'll grab our vans from Nippon Rent-a-Car and settle in for one night in Chitose at the ANA Crowne Plaza. Everyone is scheduled to meet at breakfast on the morning of the 18th and then we head to Otaru for our first 5 nights.
On the 23rd January we'll head north to Furano and stay there for 5 nights. As always, we'll be following the weather in each of our zones and hitting up the resort or backcountry area with the most favorable weather report. I know this season, Japan in general has been off to a very slow start. I'm hoping that when we get there, the taps will finally turn on properly. It's a tough call and looking at the weather reports with only light snow in the forecast, it's easy to get despondent about the situation, but I've skied boot top deep snow in Hokkaido before when the forecast has only called for 3cm's, so I'm always optimistic that there will be more snow than they are calling for.
We'll see. Either way, we'll have a fun adventure and enjoy what we can find. The trip officially ends back in Chitose on the 28th but this year we are going on a new adventure ourselves that I'm very excited about. For the first time, we are going to head south in Hokkaido to explore the Hakodate area where there are a couple of under the radar resorts. Then we'll drop off the remaining van in Hakodate and take the bullet train under the ocean to Aomori to start our Tohoku adventure on the 1st of February (I'll post a separate TR for Tohoku). That should be a pretty cool experience.
When we've visited Hakodate, that should tick off the bigger resorts in southern Hokkaido. There are 104 ski resorts listed for Hokkaido alone, but I try and focus on the resorts that have more than a 300m vertical. There are a ton of small areas that are just small hills that I'm unlikely to try and ski. There's a few further north past Asahikawa that I need to hit up and then that's most of the bigger resorts covered in Hokkaido. I'd be pretty happy to tick all the big ones off. Then I think the focus can shift to Honshu and heading south from Tohoku, which we are starting to do.
So, hopefully the next post will be from Japan. Until then! Wish me luck.....
- Matt