NZSnowboard.com - The home of New Zealand Snowboarding

5th February 2009

I've always heard Japan had amazing snow and terrain, and that was somewhere I had to see. After living in between Utah and Queenstown for 6 years it was definitely time to explore a new domain.

The Dero's ready to shred in the land of the rising sun

Bags are packed and ready to go.....

Dero art?.....

After Roland Morley Brown,Vaughan Brookfield and myself booked our flights I started hearing more and more people say they were thinking about doing the same. Who would have guessed there would be 7 deros on Flight NZ99 to Tokyo. Should we send the japanese people a warning?
 
On the morning of departure, amazingly all 7 deros and two other friends checked in on time, ready for our 24 hour + day of travelling. After cleaning the flight out of spirits and almost all the beer we were cut off by the flight attendants, so we got started on a bottle of jack daniels, after all we had an impression to make.
 
That night we stayed in Sapporo, still two hours from our final destination 'Kutchan'. The next morning we caught a train to Kutchan. As we travelled along the coastline, on the right side of the train we could see the surf breaking. Perfect left handers wrapped around a point as the snow was dumping. As we neared Kutchan we started to see pillow lines, trees and some cool terrain with scattered bamboo, the place looked epic and we hadn't even seen the mountains yet.

Keeping it Dero with a legit Backside Wallride

Vaughan Brookfield, Rob Mitchell and Mark Anderson enjoying the vending machines

Our first few days in the land of the rising sun were untouchable. Uppon arrival, Niseko had just received a big dump. Our first day at 'Grand Hirafu' skifield would have to be some of the best powder riding I've ever had. Bottomless in the trees and a couple of feet on piste. The resort itself was quite steep and had plenty of pillows and natural features to jump and drop off. As the sun went down it was just the beginning, the lights turned on and you could see a lot more. There were a lot less people after 5pm and the storm was topping up the tracks that we'd left earlier in the day, we couldn't believe how lucky we were.
 
To be continued in a couply days....







- Heath Patterson