Niseko Fresh Daily

Fresh is best, & few places on the planet are more likely to deliver your daily dose than Niseko. OK, it’s not as easy to find as ‘back in the day’, but SnowAction scored 7 pow days in 7 last year, as Owain Price reports.

Yes, fresh is best, as your doctor or supermarket ads can tell you. At Niseko, probably more so than any mainstream big resort on the planet, you are in with a great shot at your fair share of it just by getting up early on the endless good days from December through to early March. We did just that on day one, staying at the Hilton providing direct access for jumping on the first few gondolas there, then being up high when the ‘pizza box’ single chairs opened.
Of course the competition is on nowadays. Forget whinging about too many Aussies, the Euros have arrived in force, mostly males, and usually fully geared up with airbags etc., good skiers on a serious powder mission in that uniquely organized northern European way. Unfortunately some think they know more about local conditions than the locals, and being over confident in their gear and skills are pushing the safety boundaries, with tragic but predictable results. Be wary of competing with, or following them – plunge head first into a deep crack and an airbag won’t do much to save you.
A much smarter way to maintain the fresh daily pace, if you don’t have local friends with the knowledge to show you the goods, is to get professional help. That can mean digging deeper for a ¥40,000 snow cat day with the Niseko Photography cat tours. But for less money, plus a bit more effort, guiding services like laid back ex-pat Kiwi Sam Kerr’s Niseko Xtreme Tours can get you out into sensational back country from ¥11,000 per person for 3 people. Sam is a seriously hard charging boarder who knows his way around the sweet spots, like above Goshiki Onsen, where competition for tracks is virtually non-existent.
Yes, the yards were hard, not helped by a new set of skins stuff-up of my own making – never, ever forget the backing on the glue side when buying new skins! It took 4 big lads about 15 minutes to pull one set of skins open, ripping and tearing in tug-of-war mode as we slid around in the snow. Just as we finally did it the skin folded back in on itself, glued tight, which took another 15 minutes of agonising thumbs and finger wrenching in seriously sub-zero temperatures to rip it open again.

Finally sorted, we set off after Sam, who on his snow shoes was setting a cracking pace through the knee deep snow. Visibility was typical Niseko, limited, as flurries continued. But weirdly there was some sort of temperature inversion, and as we got near treeline the snow had warmed up, getting heavier, not lighter with more altitude, and seriously slabby, even though it was freezing. Not to mention slidy, so Sam took us around to a safer spot to drop in. He nailed the aspect perfectly, as 100m down we transitioned from heavy to light white, and were back out to our starting hike track in a fraction of the ascent time.
Hiked out for the day we checked out tiny Chisenopuri down the road instead. Tucked away on the backside of Annupuri, and in danger of being shut down for lack of patronage (if it’s still open next season sign the petition to keep it that way), you can just pay per run, so we did one lap on the only chairlift, a long bubble double. Chisen is mostly fairly flat, and the snow went so gluey that straightlining all the way down was the only option on the runout back to the snow bridges over the thermal pools at the bottom. I can’t remember being so cold, yet the snow so sticky, anywhere. Them’s the breaks going back country, the first line had made the day regardless.

Next on the list I had no doubts we would get the goods – Hanazono Powder Guide’s First Tracks program being the guaranteed way to get just that, as we reported last year. Back then we only had a dusting, and chief guide Smokin’ Joe Sugano had to use all his knowledge to find us some untracked lines.
This time round it had been, was, and continued to snow in the normal Nisekoan way. The fruit farm – Strawberry and Blackberry Fields – was perfect for openers, except for the cracks that were opening up unseasonally early, so some caution was in order (so much so the whole area was closed down a couple of weeks later, much earlier than normal).
A couple of British ski writers came along for part of the session, and soon found themselves lost for comparisons with their usual destinations in the Alps. “We never knew it would be this good” was the consensus from these Eurocentrics.
Hauling in for lunch at Hanazono’s 308 restaurant I shared a table with an Aussie with similar views on the European vs Niseko equation.
“I was in Austria for 3 weeks before coming here – I’ve been going there for years” he announced. “But I’m not going back, the powder here is amazing, we had nothing like it there, here it’s every day. This is the best week of skiing I’ve ever had!”
He didn’t get any arguments from out side of the table.

Finally, late in our powder week, we cracked the rare Niseko jackpot of powder and sunshine. Yes, Niseko is no place to work on your tan, but the day I discovered Moiwa the sun popped out just long enough to get some shots and a perspective on the whole mountain. After several visits over the past 8 years, mostly blundering around in low, snowy visibility, I could actually see how it all fits together.
Looking back up at Annupuri to the peak, seeing the top of the ridge above Goshiki we had skinned up earlier in the week, and seeing how easy it is to hook back into the Grand Hirafu area from peaceful Moiwa, I felt I had a handle on the area.
On a day when the frontside at Hirafu was swarming, Moiwa was virtually deserted. The liftline of just 20 or so waiting for the avi all clear had a decidedly local flavour. Chad Johnston from Slow Life Lodge and Al McVie from Proski were next in line to us, and most people seemed to know each other.

Interviewing owner Shinsuke Terasawa before skiing was fortuitous – he hooked me up with local legend guide Naoto Sato, who had just one Asian client for the day who kindly didn’t object. She turned out to be Lisa Chen, of Lisa Chen Real Estate in inner Sydney, a powder fanatic who loves Niseko and has been coming back for several seasons with the same guide. She made a nice change in ski models from our hirsute A-team lads, and proved handy as a translator too.
With only 20 odd people to share the mountain there was no need to stampede out to Moiwa’s bowls, so we warmed up with a lap on the ‘groomer’ – nicely topped with 20cm or so of fresh.
Then we worked our way out, usually the first, or at worst the second lot of people to get to every line we took. The further you go the more traversing, and a longer runout, with the good steeper (but not steep) clean lines making up in quality for their lack of length.
Depending on your fitness, and where you are staying, you could cut back to Annupuri and work your way back to the central zone after a session here. Moiwa’s great value 4 hour pass would suffice for most people doing that. By road its 20 minutes or so drive around from Hirafu. Either way adding a day or two here is well worth it, or if you like the quiet life and don’t mind the shorter runs, at around $380 a Moiwa season pass will keep you off the streets for peanuts.
We didn’t check it out, but Moiwa owner Terusawa San reckons the new lift he put in for the season accesses more nice side country, apart from its more obvious function as a beginner lift.
So if anyone tells you the great pow days are over in Niseko, they’re dreaming: 7 out of 7 ain’t bad, anywhere, and as for our Hokkaido score, that rocked on to 11 from 11 in Kurodake and Asahidake, or 11 & 1/2 counting night skiing at Furano.