CHANGING SEASONS

POWDER! It is, perhaps, the most abused word in skiing’s lexicography. True, extreme makes a robust case for that honour. But although more absurdly applied, extreme isn’t used nowadays with anything approaching the frequency of powder, which now seemingly applies to fresh snow of any depth, quantity or consistency. Wet mank. Three centimetres on crust. A flurry. It doesn’t matter. Yo dude, pow!

There is, however, one skiing destination that justifies the powder hype: Japan.

Of the thousand-plus days I’ve skied, it’s here I’ve found the deepest snow. Where day after day I’ve skied blower-dry, nipple-deep fluff. Where the face shots were so sustained breathing was difficult. Where the snow was so pure and ethereally soft it blurred heaven and earth.

Yet its reputation almost does the country a disservice. I’m not saying it’s not justified—especially on the northern island of Hokkaido—but it has a reductive effect; most skiers see Japan as nothing more than a powder repository. But the country offers skiers much more, if you know where, and, importantly, when to go. Instead of arriving in Tokyo and transferring to points north, take a train west instead. Squeeze up the valleys and burrow under the mountains, go through the ancient castle town of Matsumoto, and then watch the hills press in once more before you finally emerge at Hakuba.

I ‘discovered’ Hakuba back in Nineties, before it was on gaijin skiers’ radar. I had the good fortune of living in Japan at the time. Like Hokkaido, Hakuba, I found out, gets loads of snow, averaging 14 metres annually. But lying six hundred kilometres further south—closer to the equator than Australia’s Mt Hotham—Hakuba has correspondingly heavier snow. Don’t go there expecting Hokkaido’s cold-smoke powder.

But Hakuba has something Hokkaido doesn’t: terrain. Kick-arse, pucker-steep, big line terrain. While Hokkaido is generally, well, mellow, when you step out of Hakuba Station there—rising above the tangled wires and chintzy buildings—is the sawtoothed chain of the North Alps. Sharp. Complex. Majestic. In the years since leaving Japan, as much as Hokkaido’s suffocating, deep-pow face shots were memorable, in terms of skiing it was the mountains behind Hakuba I wanted to return to most.

For many skiers, though, Hakuba has its issues, although the biggest hurdle in the eyes of many skiers is actually viewed by a minority (including myself) as a plus: None of this spectacular terrain is lifted. Chairs here climb barely halfway up the mountains, providing access only to good, but not great, terrain. To access the latter, you’ve gotta earn your turns. And this brings us to the second issue: Avalanches.

With all that snow, and on such angled slopes, mid-winter touring here can be hazardous. By spring, however, the snowpack is far more stable. May, in fact,