Fresh Tracks

With the snow falling on Japan’s mountain resorts, Club Members explain the pull of the piste.

On crisp mountain days, when tree branches bow with fresh snow, the breeze scatters the powder and the crystals catch the sunlight, creating an effect called “diamond dust.”

“On a really beautiful day, the forest is surrounded with diamond dust, and you just ski down on your own,” says Club Member Hideki Fukui. “It’s only me and nature.”

With resorts opening for another ski season, Fukui and other Club powder hounds expound on the thrill of heading into Japan’s wintry landscape.

Hideki Fukui
Growing up in the mountainous terrain of the northern Japanese prefecture of Akita, Hideki Fukui took ski lessons during school physical education class in the winter.

After a career in banking, he retired at age 42 and rekindled his passion for the slopes, skiing as many as 50 days in a typical season.

“Just going up and down, up and down with the lift, that was getting boring,” says Fukui, 60. “So I started going into the fresh snow in the forest.”

Seven years ago, he completed a mountain ski school program. During the school’s graduation tour in Nagano, the group of students slept overnight in an ice cave.

“You cannot move, you cannot get out, you are sleeping like mummies. Then you hear something like the wind, and it drives you nuts,” says Fukui of the subzero outing. “In the morning, when the sun comes up and you climb out of that hole, it’s a good feeling.”

Based in Chicago, Fukui returns to Japan every winter to join ski school alumni for mountain excursions. Before beginning their trek, they slice out a 2-meter wedge in the snow to inspect the compactness of the layers beneath.

With seals on their skis to prevent slippage, and carrying emergency beacons, snow shovels, probes and climbing ropes, they hike up the slopes for five to six hours to reach the summit, whether it’s Mount Oku Shirane in the Nikko National Park or Tateyama in Toyama Prefecture.

It was while camping out in Tateyama last year when Fukui and his climbing mates were struck by a blizzard that dumped half a meter of snow every night. The day after they returned to safety, a member of a university mountaineering team was killed in an avalanche on the same slope.

“I’m not an amateur anymore, but I started realizing that gear is very important,” he says, “but more than that is the weather. You have to read the weather.”

Fukui’s preferred winter activity is now backcountry skiing at Kagura, a popular resort in Niigata that is well equipped to deal with emergencies. Then every spring, he slogs up Mount Fuji, hauling his skis on his back for seven hours, before making a speedy 25-minute descent to the fifth station.

“Mount Fuji itself, even during the summer, is not pretty. Nothing is pretty there,” says Fukui. “But after you climb up and ski down and look at it from afar, it’s beautiful.”

Ernesto A’ De Lima

When Ernesto A’ de Lima moved to Switzerland from his native Mexico at age 7, he witnessed snow for the first time.

“It was like a dream,” says A’ de Lima, 57. “It is a very calm situation, and that reflects on why I became so passionate about skiing. Because it takes me to a very wonderful, calm situation.”

A’ de Lima skied in the Swiss and French Alps every winter, and while he was never competitive, it was a passion he carried into adulthood, when he would blaze through virgin snow in the Chilean Andes and the mountains of Bariloche in Argentina’s
Patagonia region.

He taught both of his sons how to ski from the age of 3, first at Beaver Creek in Colorado and then at the popular Hokkaido resort of Niseko, where they bought a family chalet. When the boys were in elementary school, A’ de Lima took them up the final lift of Mount Annupuri, hiking the last 400 meters to the peak.

“Coming down was beautiful,” he says. “It was like a bed of powder snow in front of you and it went for miles and miles.”

In 2016, A’ de Lima and his sons, Stefano, 19, and Leonardo, 17, earned level one professional instructor certificates, allowing them to teach beginner skiers anywhere in the world (except France).

While his sons gained a vocation to fall back on during winter break, A’ de Lima relearned the basics of skiing.

“It shows how important every single step is along the way, to teach a person to put on a set of skis, how to hold even the poles,” he says. “Now, I focus on my balance, on my position, my stance. It allowed us to become better skiers.”

These days, it’s his sons who are waiting at the bottom of the run. Their next adventure lies at an Alaskan lodge where, for seven days, the family will heli-ski a different mountain each day.

“Skiing as a family activity makes you very close,” says A’ de Lima. “You are exploring beautiful surroundings and sharing an amazing experience.”

Stacey Simon
“Have you heard about Japow?” asks a beaming Stacey Simon. “Japanese powder.”

When Simon’s company asked if she wanted to transfer to Tokyo two years ago, part of the attraction to the avid snowboarder was Japan’s abundance of accessible ski slopes.

“Japanese snow is the best in the world,” enthuses Simon, 37, who quickly discovered the slopes of Hakuba, Naeba and Shiga Kogen. “It’s light and fluffy and it’s not heavy. It’s just fun to kind of play in and plow through.”

Originally from Asbury Park, New Jersey (the home of Bruce Springsteen and Six Flags amusement parks), Simon skied just a handful of times as a youngster. She gave snowboarding a try on the bunny hills of New Hampshire and Vermont, and describes her first attempts as “painful.”

Work eventually took her to Switzerland where every weekend her co-workers headed to the Alps with their snowboards.

“I took a few lessons, but the majority of my friends in Switzerland were expert skiers,” says Simon, adding that one friend was a junior Olympian from Canada. “It was either keep up or ski by yourself, so I learned pretty quickly to keep up.”

Simon dragged her board everywhere from Chamonix to St Anton. She and her crew rented a chalet in Lenzerheide, and, by the end of her five-year Swiss stint, Simon was boarding down backcountry slopes.

“It is one of the few times that I can really check out,” says Simon. “When I am snowboarding, my mind just goes blank, and it is just about being right there, right now.”

On occasion, the ground has shifted beneath her. Simon, who completed avalanche training, has never experienced a life-threatening situation, though she once mistook the roof of a house for a jump and dislocated her shoulder after a two-story fall.

Last season, Simon made 15 snowboarding trips in Japan. She names Niseko, famous for its chest-deep powder and off-piste slopes, as a favorite escape.

“Sometimes you take the gondola up the mountain, and then see that if you walk for another hour, you can get to somewhere that no one has ever touched before,” she says. “You get a fresh line, where you look back at the hill, and yours is the only line that has gone down. That’s an amazing feeling.”

Words: Nick Narigon
Image: Yuuki Ide

Sapporo Snow Festival Preview Tour
Feb 3–5