LOST IN HAKUBA, JAPAN

Hakuba, Japan
Quick Notes and Photos by: Ian Millar

The first day I showed up it snowed 1 meter of snow, the typical turn in Japan after a dump like this.
I met up with Ripzone Japan rider Yuuta. Yuuta is the Happo ninja. I took him to this gap I hit the day before, which he never had hit. He nailed this back 3 off it.
There are dams everywhere on the Happo, they make for some fun riding.
The Northern Alps are insane, i can't figure out why they have not been exploited yet.
Here is me with a little slash, and a line off the side of the road. The cool thing about this line was it had this stairway to the top of it.
A nice picture of my friend Kaori
It was deep workers had the work cut out for them
Pretty trees
Down town Tsusgaike
Kaori ...Dong!
Kaori droppin in
Kyoto on the Shit gap
Moni house dog
New Years Day
Nicks diggin out the days snow
Nick jumpin his gapper
Me and Potsi were waiting for a clearing, curing boredom
Posti met up with R2D2
Random cronic getting high by the noboard
One of the runs fed out this road, it was pretty fun ripping down it
Kaori at the end of Jan 1st
Jason tieing Nick after he passed out

On Greg Todds memorial day I took the Noboard and shredded, the mountain, it was sick, best Noboard day I had yet. this dam line was so fun, after shredding this gully it ended up at a dam that you could ride threw. With no bindings it was a bit sketchy.
Heres some shots of lines I shredded...
The Breaks top view
The Face
The Face Gates
Dart Vader
The Gate Pillows
Gates to Face connecter
The Dam Triple
So there was line that I had been eyeing up since the day I got there, but it was considered closed and ended up on the wrong side of the dams, I would have to cross a creek to get back to boundry. And with the snow as deep as it was that would have been a serious problem. Finally I eyed up a different route out and decided to head in. From what I heard this line had not been ridden in atleast 2 years. It was deep and had some sweet pillows in it. It also had this weird cable that crossed it. On previous inspections I noticed that this animal, a Kumushka, always hung out at the cable zone. So I figured when I drop in he will likey start to run. Well as suspected when I crossed the cable I looked over and he started running down the run. It was insane we were about ten feet apart for around 50 feet, finally he got tired and headed in to the trees so i followed. He stopped and I did too, we checked each other out and he split. He was the coolest experience I ever had on a shred stick.

Overall best trip ever!! untill I got home and found my driveway had been barried in snow. I just had to laugh this one off.