Mt Pinneshiri: Ski touring up north

I had just pulled up at the onsen after a day of skiing at Kokusai, an hour or so west of Sapporo, when the message came through from Goro-san: "Pinneshiri is 8:30 set in [with the Google map on the right]... Very far. All right?"

"Very far" was accurate. Pinneshiri was a good five hours from Kokusai, and that included taking the toll roads to skip the Sapporo traffic. To get there by 8:30 the next morning was going to be a mission. But Goro-san's recommendations are not to be take lightly. He's been living and skiing in Hokkaido all his life. Six days a week he's the cool and collected proprietor of Cafe Nomad (カフェ　ノマド） in Higashikawa. On the other day he rips. I smashed a quick bowl of yakisoba and hit the road.

At 5:30 the next morning I met Goro-san and T (short for Trygve - a hard charging Norwegian guy who's coaching nordic skiing in Higashikawa) outside Cafe Nomad. We all piled into the into the bus and drove due north. Goro-san had called up a friend from the area to join us for the day. Kougami-san is apparently notorious for his epic road-biking exploits during the summer, and shortly after meeting us at the car park he set about pleasantly destroying us all on the skin track. At least I didn't feel guilty about not breaking trail.

Now, the details are little hazy because of the language barrier, but as I understand it, Kougami-san "found" this mountain just four years ago. Before that, it doesn't sounds like anyone was skiing there. It's 10 minutes from his house and he's been guiding, hiking and dropping lines there ever since. It's basically his mountain, and it was a real privilege to ride there with him for the day. In perfect bluebird weather he showed us the best snow on some sheltered southern aspects. The terrain is fun without being intimidating, the snow was super dry after the clear conditions overnight, and the skiing was awesome. A good crew, in great snow, on a beautiful mountain, with no-one else in sight. Basically the perfect day. To the north we could see the Sea of Okhotsk, and to the west we were looking out towards the Sea of Japan. With the ocean on three sides, Pinneshiri gets a lot of wind, but for us it was perfectly still. They don't call Goro-san "Mr Bluebird" for nothing!

We headed down in the soft light of the late afternoon and grinned at each other like idiots in the car park. Kougami-san headed off, and the rest of us went to the onsen, which was literally just over the road (I've reached the point where this seems completely predictable and normal - it's Hokkaido). Then it was back into the van and a stoked, quiet drive back to Higashikawa. Skiing has plenty of good days, but there are just a few days that are better than good, that stand out in your memory. Pinneshiri was totally worth the drive.

Teine: A summary

Since I arrived in Japan I've mostly been hanging out in central Hokkaido. The ski hills are quiet, the weather is calm (although it snows very gently pretty much all the time), the towns are a bit smaller and the locals are friendly. But there's great skiing all over Hokkaido, so last week I loaded up the bus and headed towards the bright lights and busy streets of Sapporo to ski at Teine (right on the edge of town) and Kokusai (just on the other side of Otaru, a short drive away).

I first got to Teine on a Monday, but it happened to be a public holiday so the hill was pretty busy with locals coming up from town. This makes for a lot of cars in the car park and the occasional one-minute wait in the lift queue, but most of the locals stick to the groomed runs or the Olympia Zone lower on the mountain so there was still plenty of untracked snow to be found. I ended up riding with Andy and the Ezo Pow crew who were kind enough to show me a few sneaky lines on their home mountain.

The next day everyone had gone back to school and work, and with another 15-20cm of snow overnight the whole mountain had reset. Teine really turns it on mid-week. No crowds, steep terrain, and heaps of off-piste skiing. There are options for everyone: Mellow trees, steep open gullies, groomers, little jumps and some serious cliffs. I found a neat natural hit line and was getting faceshots at 3:40 in the afternoon!

I put together a video summarising the experience. It's doesn't exactly stack up with the latest edit from Candide Thovex, but it does capture all the ingredients for a great day on the hill: Trees, pow, faceshots, empty lift lines and escalators. Sorry about the quality - I'm working with some seriously limited internet...