After a couple of winters in Japan, I had a big problem. I couldn’t go back… Well, not easily anyway. I’d spent seasons bouncing between Falls Creek and Japan. First Niseko and then Hakuba, squeezing as much winter as I possibly could out of every year.
By this point, skiing had well and truly got its hooks into me… Hakuba had been epic.
I was working in rentals, skiing every opportunity I got, and essentially doing what every twenty-something ski bum was trying to do – hustle just enough income without letting work get in the way of skiing.
A few of the crew I worked with got injuries that season, which left me as one of the only able-bodied staff members available for the all-important post-morning-rush “shred break”.
Terrible luck. For them! I’d disappear for a couple of hours, ski myself stupid, then walk back into the shop absolutely beaming. The answer every single time to “how was it?” – “terrible.” Absolutely terrible.
Hakuba itself was a different beast to the Niseko I’d experienced a couple of winters earlier. The mountains were bigger, far more serious and significantly more spread out. Local knowledge mattered. Take the wrong turn and you weren’t just hiking out of a creek – you could potentially find yourself somewhere you couldn’t get out of.
And as more foreigners started discovering the place, I noticed something else changing. The secrets were being protected, which very much reminded me of surf culture.
There were stashes you didn’t talk about. Lines you didn’t show everyone. If someone had spent years working something out, that knowledge belonged to them and maybe you’d be lucky enough they’d take you there.
I remember a local argument blowing up after signs appeared in the trees directing guests through what had previously been someone’s ‘secret spot’. Japan’s secret was getting out, and not everyone was stoked.
I had an amazing Winter there. Endless skiing, partying, building creek gaps, dancing plenty of nights away at Master Braster and making great mates. But something about Hakuba at that time just did not give me the same feeling I’d had during that first season in Niseko.
Still, I wanted more of Japan. There was just one slight issue… My working holiday visa didn’t. As an Australian, I’d managed to squeeze two winters out of it, but that was where the easy path ended.
Fortunately for me, I had another card to play – a very useful little rich mahogany one… An Irish passport.
Suddenly, Europe was wide open. No working holiday visa, no countdown clock. If you’re a young skier trying to work out where to spend another winter, having the entire European Alps available to you isn’t exactly a terrible consolation prize.
So after another season at Falls Creek, I started looking for jobs. I stumbled across Doorstep Skis in Morzine. I’d never been to Morzine. I didn’t know anyone there. I applied online, got the job and thought… Why not?
Europe was supposed to be the dream.
Flying into Geneva felt wildly surreal. I’d left Australia on my Australian passport, travelled halfway around the world and then arrived at the European border, pulled out my Irish passport and… just walked in. No visa interview. No working holiday paperwork. I was European.
Rightio then!
A transfer took me up into Morzine in the Portes du Soleil, and before long I was living in the French Alps wondering what the hell I’d signed myself up for. It turned out to be one of the best winters of my life.
Doorstep Skis was unlike any rental operation I’d worked in before. It was a ski-rental valet service. We’d prepare the equipment, load everything up and deliver it directly to chalets and hotels, then meet guests and make sure everything fitted correctly.
Europe’s Saturday-to-Saturday holiday culture meant the work came in enormous waves. Changeover days were carnage. Long days… Really long days.
But get through them and you’d have huge chunks of the week available to ski, with only the odd afternoon fitting or equipment run. For someone whose main objective in life was still essentially ski as much as humanly possible, this was an excellent arrangement.
I learned heaps. Not just about rentals and ski servicing, but about how a completely different ski industry operated. And I found my people – again.
I’d arrived knowing nobody, but somehow ended up accepted into the local seasonaire crew pretty quickly. It probably helped that I could ski. It definitely helped that I could party (this was peak dubstep après era). There were snakebites. There were enormous nights.
There was a game called shoe golf that involved throwing your shoe at predetermined ‘holes’ (generally signs) on the walk home and counting how many throws it took you to hit them.
One night I lost a shoe completely – never saw it again. I still have questions. But…the skiing… The scale of Europe blew my absolute mind. I remember hiking one line that still sits among the top descents of my life. The exposure getting there was terrifying – huge drops, wind hammering across the mountain, so much that one of our crew sensibly decided to turn around.
I continued. Bravery or stupidity? You decide. But I remember standing up there thinking. This is skiing. Europe was everything I’d hoped it would be. Well, almost.
There was one thing missing.
Powder. More accurately, the ridiculous consistency of powder that Japan provided. France had incredible terrain, massive mountains, huge lift networks, amazing culture, great people.
When it snowed, it was phenomenal. But I’d become spoiled and accustomed to something completely unreasonable in comparison – Japan.
The feeling of waking up, looking outside and seeing that it had done it again. Another reset, another powder day, another morning where the evidence of everything you skied yesterday was gone.
Morzine gave me one of the greatest winters of my life, but instead of curing my obsession with Japan, Europe somehow made it worse. Somewhere during that season I stopped wondering whether I’d return to Japan. The question became…
How do I get back?
Whatever it took.
After seven or eight months in Europe, I returned to Australia and headed back to Falls Creek, back into rentals, back into another Australian winter. But Japan was sitting in the back of my mind.
The sensible option would have been Europe again. I had the passport, contacts, experience and I knew I could easily go back. But sensible decisions weren’t exactly what had created this life in the first place. I wanted Japan. So I found a way back.
Now, twenty-something Austin’s definition of ‘finding a way’ wasn’t always the same as forty-something Austin’s. I returned to ‘work cashies’. Not something I’d recommend, and certainly not something I’d do now. But that’s what happened.
To stay out of sight, I worked nights tuning skis. ‘Workshop’ might be an exaggeration. It was pretty old school – wax rubbed onto skis by hand, heat gun edges tuned manually, repeat. Again. And again. And again.
I worked my arse off and got ridiculously fast at it. Because I took pride in doing the job well, but mostly because I had other priorities. I wanted to ski in the morning and I wanted to go out with my mates at night.
Efficiency is priority when you want to maximise powder and beers. It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t particularly sensible, and, yes, it wasn’t legal.
But I was back baby!
I had another epic season in Hakuba. But… something was still nagging at me. Don’t get me wrong. The skiing was phenomenal, I’d made great mates, I loved the mountains. But I kept thinking about Niseko and the people from that first winter. About Wild Bill’s. About the little community that had welcomed a broke young Australian with a maxxed out credit card and absolutely no idea what he was doing.
So when the Hakuba season finished, I decided I wasn’t going home without seeing them.
Which meant… Another ferry. Apparently ferries had become an important part of my Japanese ski career. This time I made my way across to Niigata and caught the ferry north to Otaru. Then on to Niseko. Eventually I walked back through the doors of Wild Bill’s.
I hadn’t planned some grand homecoming. I just walked in the way I always had. “Dozooooooooooo!!!!.” A few heads turned. Then everything happened at once. Brett. Takayo. Hachi. Azumi. The crew from that first winter.
Hugs. Kisses. Laughing. Ridiculously strong drinks – reverse Jägerbombs (IYKYK). It felt like I’d never left. And then Wazza saw me. Anyone who spent time around Niseko back then probably knows Wazza. He looked at me and said…
“Welcome home, Austin.”
Feels. All of the feels. I’d spent the previous few years chasing winter around the world. Falls Creek, Niseko, Hakuba, Morzine, back to Falls, back to Japan. Because I wanted to ski.
When I left Europe, I was convinced I needed to get back to Japan because I missed the powder. And maybe that was part of it. But standing inside Wild Bill’s surrounded by people I hadn’t seen in far too long, I finally clocked there was something else pulling me back.
The snow was incredible, the skiing had changed my life. But somewhere along the way, Japan had stopped being somewhere I went for winter. It had become somewhere I belonged.
Europe gave me one of the best seasons of my life. It gave me skills that would eventually become part of my career, it gave me lifelong mates, it showed me just how enormous the world of skiing really was.
But most importantly, leaving Japan gave me perspective. Sometimes you have to leave somewhere to realise you’d found home. Once I’d worked that out, there was nothing that was going to stop me getting back there.
Whatever it took.
Words and Images: Austin Toner
