ABOARD THE ICEBOX: A HOKKAIDO STAYCATION

What drives our desire to explore the unknown? To travel and experience new lands? It’s a beautiful craving. There’s a deep, instinctual voice telling us to continue moving forward. The pull toward the next horizon is as old as humanity.

When Daisuke Watanabe told me he’d never been to the northernmost point of Hokkaido—Wakkanai—I was shocked. It’s only a nine-hour drive from where he grew up in Niseko and just four-and-a-half hours from Central Hokkaido, where he loves to ride. But he quickly reminded me that, in Japan, nine hours is considered a very far distance to travel by car.

Daisuke has been immersed in the mountains and snowboarding community his whole life. He began snowboarding at the age of 5 on the very same mountain that his grandfather and great uncle pioneered. Back in the 1960s, Daisuke’s elders hiked Mt. Hirafu/Annupuri and began creating detailed topographical maps matched with photos of the sasa (broad-leaf bamboo) covered slopes. In 1961, Daisuke’s grandfather was on a construction crew setting the first lift tower poles for Niseko Tokyu Grand Hirafu, which is now the largest of the four resorts that make up the Niseko United ski area.

Daisuke planted the seed of a road trip around his home island of Niseko the last time I visited him. That was prior to the country shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On that trip I encountered the K2 Airstream, a towable camper the company uses mostly for events. Daisuke told me then, “We’re gonna take that on a road trip one day.” And four years later we are sitting in a K2-branded Cadillac Escalade pulling a massive “for Japan” dual-axle Airstream across what may be the snowiest place on Earth.

OUR TRIP BEGINS just outside of Niseko at Moiwa Ski Resort where the Airstream has already been posted up for a week for a demo. The crew consists of Aito Ito, Aya Sato, Blain LeBlanc, Keita Yamazaki, Daisuke and me. We camp in the ski resort’s parking lot for a few extra days to ride nearby terrain, which offers long, weaving gullies and well-spaced tree runs that allow for free-flowing turns. In the early season tall sasa covers the ground here. But it begins to disappear as the snowpack grows and forms marshmallows on Japan’s iconic birch forest.

The Airstream, with its thin and bare- ly insulated aluminum walls, is quickly nicknamed the “Icebox,” and it’s ours for two glorious weeks. We say farewell to Keita and roll out of the Moiwa lot. For the remainder of the trip there will be five of us, bundled up and battling frigid air. But it’s the intersection of cold air and Pacific flows that produces Hokkaido’s un- believable snow, and we can only hope the Icebox’s thin aluminum walls and propane furnace will protect us from the cold.

Furano, Central Hokkaido is our next stop. Temps hold steady at 3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is seasonally appropriate for the Furano Valley. What is unusual are the consistent bluebird mornings we’re gifted day after day. Deep, cold snow and good light—what more could you ask for? It’s Aya’s and Aito’s first time to Furano. Each day we go somewhere new, hitting Tokachidake Onsen, Asahidake Ropeway, Furano Ski Resort and the Mikasa mountain range. Each day we grow closer to each other as we break down language barriers and board our brains out, sharing lines and laughs that transcend language barriers. Everything is going smoothly. Almost too smoothly.

EVEN THOUGH there isn’t much in the way of mountains to snowboard on in Wakkanai, Daisuke is determined to get there. So we leave fruitful Furano and point it north. After weaving up the coastline and watching an amazing sunset, we dip inland for the final stretch of highway. Visibility varies as gusting wind carries snow sideways. Semi-trucks send it through patches of whiteout like they’re on a secure railway. Behind the wheel, Daisuke keeps his cool. Bright neon-green streetlights perched over the highway, blasting down like laser beams, guide him through the blizzard.

We stop for a break. I open the Icebox’s door and am shocked to find the back half of its interior caked in snow. The TV, bedsheets, walls and all, covered in white. Then I see it: the side window of the Air- stream, gone. Folding hinges, laid limp, sagging like broken tentpoles. I tell the crew we have a problem and walk them over to the window.

At this point, all we can do is laugh. We’re still an hour from Wakkanai and it’s getting late. The wind only gets worse as we pull into a supermarket’s vacant parking lot with 10 minutes to spare before it closes. We purchase provisions, some duct tape and a few large cardboard boxes with which we manage to seal up the window. It’s working so well that it’s probably better insulated than the rest of the windows on the trailer. But alas, the furnace seems to have become inoperable. We post up in an overnight lot near the train station, clean all the snow out of the Airstream, make some warm food and call it a cold night.

We wake to blue skies and still air. The storm has passed. To one side is the Sea of Japan and a glimpse of Russia in the distant north. On the other side stands a 500-foot slope with small avalanche barriers. We find our way up a set of scaffolding stairs and rip a quick line back down to sea level. Then, a cold dip in the harbor and a few runs at Wakkanai Komadori Ski Resort, Japan’s northernmost ski resort, which costs us only 100 yen (roughly $0.75) per lift ride.

THE SEA OF JAPAN is calm and snow crystals dance like butterflies. Daisuke and Aito stand at the base of the monument at Cape Sōya, the northernmost point of Hokkaido, satisfied. Yet there is still one last thing we must do.

Each of us presses the button of our choice on the northernmost vending machine in all of Japan. Hot drinks drop into the dispenser, causing the classic vending machine to rattle, and we all enjoy a hot drink in the snow. The pure and simple joy of being here in this place so foreign, even for those who call Hokkaido home, proves that snowboard trips don’t always have to be about the act of snowboarding. In fact, snowboarding is just a vehicle for adventure in many ways. And the destination can be as simple as somewhere far away on the side of the road.