Day 6: Jan 9th – Teine Highlands
There was a big storm coming into the Otaru area. There were big winds and some decent moisture in the forecast, unfortunately it was going to start off pretty wet. Otaru was several degrees above freezing and forecast for rain. The resorts were also forecasting rain down low and snow up high. It wouldn’t be pretty!
My longtime friend Bob Gleason, ex-owner of the Bootdoctors in Telluride was arriving for a few days skiing with me in Otaru. There weren’t too many great choices to be made for the skiing so I suggested Teine as it has fun (steep) terrain for skiing if there isn’t fresh snow. It takes about 45 minutes to get there on the coast road from Otaru and is an easy drive. It was a good time for job to see some of the seaside development along the way to Teine.
We didn’t get there till after 9am and the carpark was pretty quiet. We got a parking space near the main lodge. When we walked inside it was time to introduce Bob to the vending machines and he bought a can of hot coffee with milk and sugar already added. He said it was pretty good. We bought a 5 hour pass and headed straight to the high speed quad chair (with bubble cover). This is a great lift and in 4 minutes, takes you from the bottom of the Highlands area all the way to the highest point that gives access to the sidecountry gate where all the best steep terrain is.
Bob wanted to do a little warmup first and we jumped into the black run near the chair. It was definitely a good warmup as it was all bumps. Nothing like steep bumps with fat skis and BC packs on. It was hard work but a good warmup. We were ready to get into the chutes after that. On our next run we skied the furthest across shoot on the far skier’s left. The left side had some untouched (but very wet snow on it on the left side. Bob went first and then I dropped in and had fun staying up on some ridges to the left. I kicked off a little wet slide that broke off, off a steep face. It moved downhill infront of me as I was making a turn and the debris unbalanced me a little but I was able to ski through it and out. It was only very small but a reminder that on steep slopes, the snow would definitely move.
There are 4 nice chutes to ski in that zone and we ticked them off one by one. We didn’t get too much into the trees as the snow was really heavy. If you ski Teine on a good powder day, getting first tracks on any of these runs would be pretty epic. Then we skied a few different areas and rode a couple of different chairs, just to show Bob the rest of the mountain, the highlight being the women’s GS course from the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics. That run hits 40 degrees and is very steep. We finished off with a late lunch just after 2pm and then we were done with the skiing.
I showed Bob the guy who makes the little toasted pancake filled fishes. When they are done, then he uses chopsticks to flip then at high speed one after the other, into a metal tray. It’s pretty impressive to watch. We had a little rest each when we got back to the hotel and then we headed into the canal district for some drinks and dinner. Of course we went to the brewery and Bob tried a couple of the different beers. He, like me, liked the Weisse beer the best. We tried to go to the BBQ place but it was closed, so we went to the sushi train instead. It’s a shame Bob didn’t get the epic powder day he was hoping for on his first day, but there’s still plenty of time for the epicness to return!
Day 7: Jan 10 – Tengu
The storm was showing no signs of slowing down, the temps had dropped and it was snowing, but the winds were howling. There was limited information on the Kokusai website and social media pages and I was concerned that it might be too windy for the gondola to run. The windspeeds had hit 85kph overnight and were slowing only slightly down to 55kph. I made the call to head to Tengu where it is lower and a little more sheltered from the wind. I sent Ella and Julian a message that were changing plans and heading to Tengu instead. Hopefully we’d see them there.
As always the GPS tried to take us on all of these crazy backroads and we got there just before 9am. There were not many cars in the carpark and we rushed to get our gear on. The main face had been partially groomed but there was plenty of fresh off to the sides of the main run. The tram was the only thing running, the double and single chairs were down with the wind. We missed the 9am tram but got a 5 hour ticket and were on the 912am tram. There was a tele skier with us and no one else. Sweet! We took the main run. It the very top it was wind-scoured and very icy, but as we dropped over the roll, it got softer and we found some nice snow. It was pretty deep in places but a few icy hard spots that you definitely felt. You couldn’t go too fast. We lapped real fast and jumped on the next tram.
For the next run, we headed to the next groomer on the skier’s left side and found nice, deep, wind-blown snow in the side of the run where it hadn’t been groomed. Then it was time to try the trees. I was concerned if it would be crunchy underneath or if the new snow would cover up the refrozen rain affected snow. It was pretty good, that gave us the confidence to try some more trees and we went into another set of trees after that. The snow was really nice in there. Then we came back up and did the trees on the far left side after a little uphill hike to make the traverse. They were wind-affected at the start, then really nice as they rolled over steeper (better shelter from the wind). That was nice skiing. Then we tried a run on the skier’s right side and that was the pick of the bunch.
We had the place to ourselves; it was just Bob and I cutting laps in by ourselves. We got in 5 nice laps. Then we saw Julian, Ella, Claire and Jeb getting tickets. We had a big group of 6 now. That would change things. We headed into the trees on the right again, a little further in and found really nice snow. We had a great ski down and when we came out, there was a patroller there watching us. He came over and said it was a closed run. Well, where we were is marked as a yellow area, a place you can go at your own risk. He thought we had gone out to the steep run on the far side and that had slid again (it had slid last season too) and we told him we had only gone a little way into the woods and not all the way across.
He seemed to say that was ok, as long as we took it easy. Fine by us. We skied a few different runs and then several groups of Westerners started turning up. Both Kiroro and Kokusai had been shut down. This was pretty much the only gig in town so a bunch of hungry powder-seeking Westerners started hitting all the trees. There’s only 2 patrollers working full-time here at Tengu and I think they were a bit overwhelmed. Out came all the fences and English warning signs and they shut down some of the trees. We watched all of this unfold from the overlook in the restaurant whilst we had lunch, it was pretty comical, the patroller staking out the top of the tree runs near the top of the gondola and stopping people from going into the trees and the Westerners playing dodge the patroller. They even put a fence up right outside the exit from the cable car top station to stop people from going around the side of the building. It was a little over the top, seeing how much energy they were having to put into all of this instead of focusing on more pertinent matters.
I hear the owners of the mountain want to attract more Westerners. I would say this scene would be very off-putting to the visitors that day (not the fault of the patrollers as they were likely doing what they are briefed to do). Maybe on a different day the patrollers might be a little bit more relaxed about people skiing in the yellow areas, but I hope they don’t continue to be as aggressive with their patrolling of what could be (and is), really fun skiing. We’ll see. We did a few more runs, finding decent snow at the side of the trail and by 3pm, we were done. Bob and I headed back to the hotel and then that night, we went for a walk around the mall at the side of the hotel and had a really nice cheap dinner at one of the restaurants in the mall. Hopefully Kokusai tomorrow for some decent powder. It’s time!
