Powder limits

YJOHN BRILEY ou don’t have to go to Japan to ski, eat sushi and soak in geothermal hot springs. But if you want deep powder without lift lines for $53 a day, the best sushi and ramen in the world in intimate, family-run restaurants and a naked soak in a 105F-degree spring with a view of the volcano that is heating your water, in the comfort of your hotel, then follow the drifting snowflake to the Land of the Rising Sun.

I am thinking this as I sit in the bustling lodge at a two-lift ski area called Seki Onsen, picking tunes on a public guitar that I pulled from the wall, with the melting vestiges of a 38-centimetre powder day still dripping from my boots. I am surrounded by friends and strangers eating noodle soup and drinking beer.

Seki Onsen is the smallest of six ski areas that hug the lower flanks of Mount Myoko, an active volcano 280 kilometres northwest of Tokyo that juts, like a clenched fist, 2.4 kilometres into the sky. In one week here we will ski five of those areas, plus two of the other 16 ski resorts that sit within an hour’s drive. (The word onsen, which means hot springs, is used liberally as a noun and verb in the many parts of Japan where such waters burble forth.)

Ten buddies and I have come from all over the United States to Akakura Onsen, a village in the highlands surrounding the city of Myoko, in late January, hoping to tap a powder spigot renowned among committed skiers. In a normal winter, cold fronts pulse down from Siberia, suck moisture off the Sea of Japan and spiral ashore, dumping up to 1,650 centimetres of snow per season on the mountains here on Honshu and the northern island of Hokkaido.

This meteorological blitzkrieg is most active from December through February, a pattern that has spawned the noun “Japanuary” among powder chasers worldwide.

Alas, this isn’t a normal winter in Myoko, something we will hear often this week. From my home in Washington, I watch with increasing gloom as front after promising front fizzles offshore or rockets up to Hokkaido. The Myoko area, according to a forecast blog I am following, is having its driest winter in memory.

But hope – especially when cornered by nonrefundable reservations – springs eternal, and the dry spell breaks the night we arrive. After a partly cloudy shuttle ride from Tokyo’s Narita International Airport, we take an exit for Akakura and smack straight into winter.

Snow falls in wind-driven sheets, blanketing the road and the surrounding forests of oak, continuing snow through big picture windows as waves of pancakes, eggs, bacon, oatmeal and fruit stream out of the kitchen. We suit up and walk five minutes to the closest ski hill, also named Akakura Onsen, where our lodge manager’s crystal-clear direction – buy ticket here, ride this lift, then transfer to this one – smashes into an impenetrable language barrier. With two adjacent resorts, we don’t know if we want a pass for one, the other, or both. Do we buy the lunch-included ticket, or is that a marketing gimmick? Where, exactly, are the most coveted powder stashes?

Eventually, the smiling ladies at the ticket counter take a pile of yen from us, slide 11 tickets across the counter and gesture us toward the slopes. After riding one lift over dead-flat ground and another up a bunny slope, we solve the map and make our way to the top of the interconnected Akakura Kanko resort, where the new snow is more than a 30 cm and still accumulating.

The Japanese, who were largely absent at the Morino Lodge, have gathered in minor force on the mountain, sticking mainly to the centre of the marked runs. That leaves ample lanes of powder on the margins, and we spend the morning feasting on the new snow, bumping farther into the woods with each run.

Akakura, like most Japanese resorts, forbids off-trail skiing, a rule that many foreigners ignore. As the storm peters out, I notice that we are sharing the trees with a broadening multicultural group. Someone else notices too: I emerge from the aspens after yet one more powder bash to see a strategically positioned ski patroller motioning me into a circle of worried-looking dudes. He points to my lift pass and, without a spoken word, adds it to a stack in his hand.

As we plead our cases in our native tongues, the patroller shakes his head and points up at the trees with a clear message: off limits. Just as we’re all giving up and starting to shuffle away, he calls us back and redistributes the seized passes.