Hello,
My name is Boris Anthony.
I took my first snowboard lesson at Stowe VT in 1987, on a Burton Cruiser. The next week I had a Sims Switchblade and I’ve been at it ever since.
I spent my formative years on “East Coast boilerplate”: the blue ice corrugated steel groomed slopes of Québec and Vermont. But I was also riding the first halfpipes and doing backflips in mogul fields. A few times a season we’d be lucky enough to experience a bit of powder on the sides of trails, and duck into the “sous-bois.”
Nowadays, I mainly surf deep Japan powder, and hike its backcountry volcanoes.
Where I ride
I spend my winters now in Japan, snowboarding at Hakkōda, a volcanic plateau of multiple peaks in Aomori, Japan. It is the snowiest place in Japan, registering on average over 14 meters of snowfall, with mid-winter snowpacks of 3 to 4 meters. It snows on average 40cm every night. It is also very stormy most of the deep winter.
There is no real ski resort. It is a national park, with a lone gondola ropeway up one of the peaks. Combining all these factors, we end up with incredibly varied 3D terrain, constant powder, and, visibility permitting, thousands of hectares of backcountry terrain.
The snow season goes through a few stages, beginning in early December and stretching out into late April. When the first snows have laid down enough of a carpet, we start hiking up the Direct trail. A few weeks into December, the little ski center opens the chair and shorten our hike a bit. Late December, the Hakkōda Ropeway allows skiers and snowboarders on, and the deep powder season is officially underway: January and February are a fury of white. With March come fewer storms, warmer temps; the first melts. The terrain smoothes out, the powder tamps down, the snow falls out of trees and suddenly you can see where you are going and the flats are crossable. A few pow days here and there but spring is definitely around the corner.
With April comes the opening of the “Gold Line”: the ring road around the plateau is now open and it is open backcountry season. Sunny days and corn snow abound.