By Gavin Kratz
Although I never allocated funds to travelling during my formative years, I always told myself the first place I would go would be Hokkaido. A bucket list ski trip that was formed over years of mashing the same Nimbus Independent En Route edits every fall. Unadulterated adventure in foreign lands, complete with the promise of things lining up perfectly only if you are brave, or fortunate enough, to be free. A ski trip that, as I got older, seemed to become less and less attainable. Priorities shifted. Critical resources like time and money were allocated to avenues other than skiing. After reaching the end of my twenties and looking back on years of hitting books and punching clocks for a small taste of this notion of freedom, I couldn’t help but wonder…
“Is this where the dream dies?”
Fast forward 7 months to touching ground in Sapporo, Japan. Outside of just skiing, I wanted to experience Hokkaido in a way that wasn’t limited to the confines of one ski resort or pre-determined charters. I wanted to storm chase. To pick up and move at the drop of a hat, or more appropriately, at the notice of a winter storm warning. To study the contours of a particular mountain range, valley, or face, and then actually be able to ride it on my own volition. What better way to achieve this than by getting your own wheels. The wheels that would help realise this dream were fitted to a Japanese Toyota Camroad 4×4 motorhome. A cozy chariot that would house myself and three of my closest powder-hungry blue collars keen enough to spend a portion of their savings on an RV rental for 28 days.
Attempting to stay true to the philosophy of storm chasing, Many of our actions were dictated by weather forecasts, local beta, or our own data collection. The more you explore, the better understanding you get for what kinds of patterns, be it weather or topography, to expect, and where. Which ranges get the most snow, and which get the most wind. Where you can expect to see more mellow rolling terrain, and where more jagged features or consistent slopes.
This ideology of intel accumulation and adaptation didn’t just apply to our main objective of skiing. Each day brought a new opportunity to learn something we could apply to the remainder of the trip. Most towns we passed through or stayed in would offer something unique. These qualities usually pertained to proximity to destinations for riding or access to amenities that would keep us clean, well fed and recharged. Things like truck stops with overnight parking, tattoo-friendly Onsens (traditional Japanese bathhouse or hot spring), laundromats, and unique food options were often boxes that needed to be checked as we travelled from town to town. Finding reasons to get out of the RV once in a while were pretty necessary as the trip went on. When your wheels are also your beds, kitchen, gear room, and drying rack, it helps to not be inside the RV taking up valuable real estate when the heaters are cranked to dry your hanging gear.
Like adapting to the mountains and the cities around them, we were also adapting to one another’s personalities. Ski touring requires a degree of comfort with your partners. You need to be able to voice concerns, discuss options, work within ability levels, and trust that each person, if the time came, can save your life. Now imagine that kind of communication for about 8-10 hours a day, everyday for a month, and top it off with navigating whose turn it is to drive at the end of each day. Hell, we literally had to take turns standing up to get something from the other side of the RV; our quarters were so tight. All decisions we made were made together, from what time we got up in the morning, where we would go skiing, when we would take days off, what areas we wanted to drive to, you name it. This can become taxing as time goes on and fatigue sets in.
I went into this trip thinking of chasing storms, skiing deep pow and maximizing the time in sheltered trees. As the trip went on, it became apparent that we weren’t all on the same page. Some of us wanted to summit higher peaks and sacrifice powder for elevation. Some wanted to have slower mornings and sleep in later. Some didn’t want to break trail into zones as much or ride the kinds of terrain I had in mind. Combatting differing ideas or preferences also usually led to confrontation and hard-headedness or submission and disassociation, depending on the person. I was beginning to feel like I planned a trip to experience freedom of travel, only to feel bound to the temperaments of my travel companions.
Not only were things in the RV tricky to navigate, but conditions outside were difficult as well. Hokkaido, like most of the rest of the world, was experiencing an abnormally warm and wet winter. Average snowpack across the island was below seasonal averages, and many of the low-pressure systems that would typically promise multiple feet of cold, dry snow were coming in with lots of wind and rising freezing levels. High winds would pound upper elevations, but rising freezing levels would make for wet conditions at lower elevations, leaving a small window to work with in many circumstances, and that’s not even considering aspect, pitch, and vegetative cover. We were finding fewer instances of the famed JAPOW we came for and more opportunities to retreat to our tiny RV with our tails between our legs.
Fortune befell us in the final weeks of our trip. When the most favourable conditions attributed to a coming storm fell over top of a mountain range I had my eyes on since this trip was a daydream years prior, I was adamant we follow it. This mountain range had very little beta on it and, aside from a small farm town and ski hill nearby, was extremely remote. What it did offer, though, was an onsen and a Michi-no-eki (basically a Japanese truck stop) at the trailhead that we would use to travel into the range’s sheltered valleys. When we arrived, not only was it apparent that we were the only ones with the idea to stage here, but that we were the only ones to stage here for a while. When I started breaking trail in thigh-deep cold smoke on our first day, I couldn’t help but think, “This is it. We found it.”
After some tensions on the first day and discussion over how we wanted to spend our final week in Japan, we all concluded we should maximize our time in this valley. We collaborated seamlessly on terrain to ride, held space and compromised for differing desires and abilities, and skied the hardest and longest we would all season. Boot packs were set, jumps were built, and pure unadulterated joy was felt. Over the next four days, we rode some of the deepest and lightest snow conditions of the trip in an endless series of valleys with small steep pitches riddled with rolls and features, while never seeing or hearing another soul. Aside from our howls of ecstasy mid face shot, and the slow trickle of the constantly accumulating snow, the air was perfectly still and silent. In these four days, I tasted the freedom I came for, but not in the way I had expected to.
When you’re an average joe embarking on an above-average travel experience, all you have is the people you choose to share it with. Your struggles with the financial, physical,l and mental pressures that come with travelling are the only constants. How they influence your partners and their influence on you are the only sponsors. You don’t see the arguments, anxieties, and compromises on Instagram, but they make a trip like this what it is. If it wasn’t for my travel partners’ individual experiences and unique personalities, I never would have hit jumps into powder I otherwise wouldn’t have built or eaten ramen at shops I otherwise may have walked past. I wouldn’t have been talked down from freaking out about loosing my cash pouch or share beef cheek with someone who otherwise may never have tried it. I wouldn’t have felt the joy of watching my friends arc effortlessly through contorted deciduous forests that I originally thought would only feel by carving those arcs myself. In the end, the freedom I experienced came in the form of sharing this unique time in my life with friends and being a part of their individual journeys. Although challenging in many ways, together we were able to prove that this kind of adventure is still possible for the average blue-collar powder enthusiast. Finally shredding JAPOW was a dream come true, but sharing that with friends was a wonderful reality too visceral to dream, and I couldn’t have done it without them.
