Reunite the Wolfpack…

Hey folks, it’s been a long time (again) since our last post. But we were busy as usual.

First we left Asahidake because of the lack of snow and went for some sightseeing to Sapporo. Sapporo has about 2 million inhabitants and is the 4 biggest city in Japan. It gets a lot of snow in winter and it is pretty cold there :).

We went to the Ski Jump Worldcup on one day. It was real nice experience and the Japanese athlete Daiki Ito deserved the win

As usual we also tried some of the traditional food from Sapporo and managed it pretty well regarding the huge language barrier here.

Traditional miso soup

Old school!!!!

After some days in Sapporo we went back to Asahikawa to get our car. It turned out to be a real special car. We love it and there is nothing more to say. With the car we drove to the western coast of Hokkaido and then along the coast to Niseko.

Somehow the scenery is real special. There are walls of snow on the side of the road and 10m past them there is the Japanese sea. It was time to throw snowballs in the sea :).

After arriving in Niseko we checked in at the Aspara Lodge and united the Wolfpack again, Tobi, Deo, Henning and David, we met them already earlier during our trip. Yesterday we decided due to the lack of snow to make a road trip with the Swiss(German)-Austrian-Swedish(Danish) Wolfpack.

After a short ride we arrived to the first spot. Some classical avalanche fences which are known from some recent movies. We represented our moves to determine the head of the wolfpack :).

Tobi in action, looks good even with a board 🙂

Deo’s frontflip

Joel’s 1st 180

Park rat David

Crazy Deo again

Joel’s 2nd 180 not that successful…

After some runs we got back in the car and searched a spot where we can ski to the sea. Fortunately we found a spot between two tunnels. We hiked along the coast and then up a mountain. It’s a special feeling you won’t forget in life when you ski to the beach with the sound of the ocean in your ears.

Joel

Roman

We will never forget it…

Joel, Deo, David, Roman and Tobi

We will stay here in Niseko for 3 more days and then bring our car back and fly to the Japanese alps (Hakuba, Nagano). David is joining us, so we are happy that a part of the Wolfpack stays united.

Stay tuned, Roman and Joel

Enjoying the life as ski bums

Hello friendly friends 🙂

Last Monday morning we packed our stuff and continued the trip from Hirafu…

… over Sapporo…

…and Asahikawa…

to Asahidake:

Asahidake is a very small resort with only one gondola and without hiking, you can only ski one short face. Because the snow conditions and the weather was not so good the last days, we hiked around the hills near the rope way station  and skied some tree runs there.

The snow forecast for the next days is not very good, so we decided to leave already today to continue our trip back to Sapporo, where we will stay till Monday for some sightseeing.

Cheers Roman & Joël

Some more snow and plans…

Hey folks,

It has been a long time since our last post. As you can imagine we have been quite busy :). It dumped and dumped tons of snow. After nearly 3 weeks here I can say that Niseko is the snowiest place I have ever been and I really can’t imagine that there is a place on earth that has more snow precipitation. Here some new pictures:

 

We skied until the end of the last week with our friends Chris, Domi, Olli and Alex until they left Niseko unfortunatly. Thank you guys for the awesome time.

 

The last couple of days I (Roman) spent at home resting cause I overused my knees a bit :). I’m getting old hahaha. Unfortunatly I missed a really good day but there gonna be a lot more in future. Actually we have the second bluebird day since our arrival and I’m sitting in the snow in front of Mount Yotei writing this post 🙂 .

 

Yesterday we set our plans for the upcomming days of our trip. We will leave the Aspara Lodge on Next Monday the 23th of January and head straight to Mount Asahidake, the highest mountain in Hokkaido, for some serious skiing :). We will stay there for 1 week and then rent a car and travel for one more week in Hokkaido. We booked a flight from Asahikawa to Narita Tokyo for the 6th February. From there we will travel to the Japanese Alps (Hakuba, Nagano) for 1 week before we come back to Tokyo to take our flight back home on the 16th February.

 THX to the Aspara Lodge and their staff!

We will post the next Post when we arrive at Mount Asahidake at the beginning of the next week.

 

Cheers Roman and Joel

 

The day before the storm…

As usual it hasn’t stop snowing yet and the first sign of the coming storm has been shown as 40cm of new snow and blue sky today. Our swiss/german friends made some shots. While i’m writing this post it’s snowing and that means that we have to get some rest for the next powder day tomorrow

Olli puts on his board

Joel

Ollis Powderturn #1

Romans Faceshot #1

Dominik

Romans Faceshot #2 before

Romans Faceshot #2 after

Alex

After some faceshots

Ollis Powderturn #2 before

Ollis Powderturn #2 after

Submarine Joel coming to the surface

Again

Romans Faceshot #3
Chris

Cheers Roman, Joel, Dominik, Olli, Chris and Alex

Getting used to the climate…

Hey folks,

It’s been some time since our last post. We were out for some skiing and had some of the best runs ever. It snowed at least 10cm eveyday since our arrival but usally its more like 30cm + everyday.

Today we spent the day hiking around and making some photos for the blog.

For the next days there is some light snow forecasted (about 20-30cm a day) before the big low pressure storm will arrive on Tuesday. This storm will bring some heavy snowfall to Niseko (I’m afraid what “heavy” means).

Enjoy your bit of snow in Switzerland an west Austria, we will report you some more sushi-powder news the next days.

Cheers Roman and Joel

Quick night session

After publishing the last post we went for some turns to the hill… Thats the result….

Cheers Roman and Joel

Welcome in the Winter Wonderland

After a 8 hour train ride we finally arrived in Hirafu / Niseko and we soon realized the incredible amount of snow in the village. Could the story about a village with never ending snowfall be true?

We will stay the next 3 weeks at the Aspara Lodge in Hirafu. We meet allready a lot of nice guys and the staff is also incredible.

For the next days a bit more snow is forecasted. About 30cm a day until weekend before the real snowfall is comming.

As i write this it’s still dumping and dumping so we will go and enjoy the powder in the night ;).
We will post more news tomorrow

Cheers Roman and Joel

Exploring Tokyo

 

Hey folks,
me and Joel created this Blog to keep you informed about our little adventure through Japan. We plan to stay in Japan for the next 6 weeks and focus as much as possible on skiing.

Now let the story begin:

I met Joel at main station in Munich the 28th December. He came from Zug, Switzerland by train and I also came from Graz with the train. After a short meet’n’greet we headed to the airport. From there we took a plane to Tokyo through Beijing. We arrived the next Day at Tokyo Narita airport. Luckily all our skis and baggage showed up at the baggage claim. With all thhis stuff we started our first adventure. Taking the Tokyo Railway System and get to the Hotel before rush hour.

It was close but we made it to the our Hotel.

The next days we spent visiting Tokyo. It’s an impresive and really big city. We tried to visit as much as posible because our time in Tokyo is limited.

The different culture is another point that makes Tokyo an intersting and funny place to visit.

Beside of shops that sell ID’s and pictures of famous popstars

We took a look at some manga shops. From samurai stories to softporn books you can find everything!

We visited some traditional shrines and temples. Before we came to Japan we weren’t aware that New Year is the most important holiday in Japan. So the shrines and temples were ungoing heavy preperation for New Year.

The skyline of Tokyo is pretty impressive.

By night we visited the the electro and geek town Akahibara which is full of electronic markets and manga stores.

Last night was New Year and we joined the Hotel staff for the traditional ceremonies at the local shrines. It was really nice experience because the locals showed us the process of the ceremony to do then do it on our own in the shrine (New Year is the only time when you can enter a shrine). The local gods give me good luck and Joel not so much good luck 🙂 for next year.Today we are relaxing a bit because its holiday and everything is closed in Tokyo. But tomorrow we will catch hour train at 6am in the morning which will bring us to Hokkaido where 6 metres of snow are waiting for us and 30-45 cm are expected for tonight.

Cheers Roman and Joel