Japan Powder Camps

Everyone picked the wrong day to be skiing with hangovers!!  It had been snowing consistently all night and the powder was nice.  It was a final Freeskiing day, so some made it up the mountain and some didn’t.  James Mutter from Furano Tourism drove Warren, myself, Neil and Felix a one hour’s drive to Kamui to ski.  On the way we got the chance to see some of the local areas and passed a tiny ski resort which was dominated by a huge Japanese Buddhist statue, the ‘Kannon‘ which towers over the piste.

We arrived at Kamui, the tiny private resort owned by ski legend Takaya Maeda who is actually the father of the guide who took us off the back of Furano the other day.  He is well into his 60’s and still ski’s every day, the deep powder in his resort.  He has designed his resort for likeminded skiers with every type of skiing from a downhill course, to accessible off piste tree skiing to regular pistes and moguls.

The sky was blue and everything was white.  Every branch on every tree was covered in a layer of snow which sparkled brightly against the blue sky.  It was breath taking!  Warren and I started to hike up over the back.  The skiing on the first hike wasn’t challenging at all, but the powder was very good.  After the descent, we took the gondola back up to the restaurant at the top where we had been told by the group who had visited a few days earlier, that the Australian owner made the best pies.  We had a pie and then Mark Weston (the main man with the pies), told us where we could find some better and steeper ski areas where nobody else would have skied.  We headed over there and trekked through the forest for ages in the deep snow until we found what we were looking for. 

There was so much to do!  We shot for a while until we had lost height. Then we started to head back to the resort.  It was a long walk out as we had gone quite far out of resort, but the silence and the colours were beautiful.  After about 20 minutes we got back to the resort and did it all again!  We bumped into Chuck on the second time round.  He was an Australian guide who had taken us skiing up the Asahidake volcano last year.  It’s a small world!  Amazing who you bump into in the middle of nowhere.

Eventually we realised we had really overshot the time we had intended getting back, and James, Neil and Felix would have been waiting for us.  The lifts were closed and it was starting to get darker, so we decided it was time to head back.  Once back, James took us to meet Mr Takaya Maeda.  He was one of those people you look at and see someone who has done it all.  He showed us his one leg that was much shorter than the other due to the amount of times he had broken it skiing.  There were powder shots of him all over the walls.  He didn’t speak a word of English but James translated and we all bowed and laughed a lot.  What a legend!

We got back to the hotel in time for dinner and very tired.  A last Japanese meal was had with the group.  The hotel did their best to make it a good one to end on.  We will miss it!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Japan powder Camps 09. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.