Today was the first time in about five years that we were back skiing on Furano-dake. To be honest I always thought Furnao-dake was overrated. The approach/exit can be a heinous, icy slalom course through tight trees, the main ridge can be wind-packed and exposed, and it’s certainly one of Hokkaido’s most popular peaks, seeing throngs of guides tours ascend every day.
But so many people love Furano-dake, so we figured it was time to spend a bit more time there to see what all the hype is about.
I’d known for a while about some named features on Furano-dake that were commonly skied. For example, Sandan Club 三段クラブ has an old map (backup here) naming Nishi-shamen 西斜面 (literally West Slope). I did some sleuthing on Yamareco.com and saw that it was indeed a popular spot to ski (see this screeshot here). So we put that on our radar to check out.
One extra motivating factor in targeting Nishi-shamen was the weather. The forecast was for low cloud and some snow, so skiing below the treeling in the trees seemed like a good option for the Saturday we were planning to ski.
We stayed the Friday night at Timbah‘s place in Shimukappu, after driving there after work in the early evening. The plan was to get to the Furano-dake trailhead by 7am, so we were all away from Timbah’s place by just after 5am in the morning.
The sun was just starting to lighten the sky as we rounded the southern end of the Daisetsuzan Range.
When we arrived at the trailhead at a few minutes before 7am, the carpark was already humming with activity. At this time of the day, most of the skiers were Japanese. It was encouraging to see that a much larger area was being cleared as parking than when we were there previously. Not only that, but the depth of the parking area was much deeper than previously.When we were there five years ago, only one vehicle could park in each spot and there was only room for about 10 cars at most. Now, we were able to fit our long (5m) van plus a long station wagon (Prius Alpha) lengthways behind each other and still be within the parking area. In addition, there were a few more spots here and there for overflow parking. This is the gong-show that it used to be in 2019. Now, it’s less of a gong-show.
This improvement is thanks to the hard lobbying work of the larger ski tour operations and local Hokkaido winter guiding/advocacy associations (such as Kamifukai). Really good to see winter activities being supported in this way in the area.
We got on our way, and saw some tracks leading straight down to a creek-crossing directly opposite the intersection. Usually, skiers head down the road a bit to an access point near the dam, but we decided to try the alternative crossing. Long story short, it wasn’t really worth it. The descent is steep, and the snow bridge was questionable.
What can we say…we’re Furano-dake noobs. Don’t trust HokkaidoWilds.org.
Once back on track, we crossed the remaining two creek crossings on the exposed wooden platforms and got on our way in earnest.
The initial 30 minutes or so from the creek to Giant Ridge was as I had remembered. Tight trees, questionable skin track. Hoardes of both skiers and snowshoers use this route, so one either has to break their own trail, or silently suffer the icy mess that the approach can entail (the area hadn’t seen any fresh snowfall for a couple of days).
Things improved once we were on the Giant Ridge proper. Given the lack of decent snowfall over the past few days, this busy ridge was about as tracked up as it gets, but it was nice to be skinning through that good old-growth forest of Furano-dake. Here and there, the forest would allow us views northeast towards the cliffs of Sandan-yama 三段山 (1748m).
Overall, for mid-January, the snowpack was lower than I would have expected. Small bushes still stuck up out of the snow.
As we ascended up the Giant Ridge, the weather started closing in. Mercifully, it wasn’t very windy on that exposed ridge. At around 1400m, we headed climber’s right of the ridge onto the mid-upper face of the Nishi-shamen bowl.
The naming of this zone is interesting. The Sandan Club (Wayback Machine backup here) names it Nishi-shamen 西斜面. It’s also referred to as Nijunirinpan-sawa 二十二林班沢 (lit. No. 22 Forest Block Creek) by skiers who have posted online, as well as on the Sandan Club’s map of the area (backup here).
However, in official government river data files, the creek is Nijurinpan-sawa 二十林班沢 (lit. No. 20 Forest Block Creek – see below and explore the data here). In trip reports by Sandan Club (e.g., this one in 2005, backup here) it’s also referred to as Nijurinpan-sawa.
So it’s hard to tell where the Nijunirinpan-sawa naming came from (indeed, I haven’t been able to find any forest blocks numbered 22, nor 20 for that matter, in National Forest data nor Prefectural Forest data).
I pushed my mapping and naming curiosities aside, however, and focused on the skiing we were to have.
At around 1400m, the Nishi-shamen upper slopes were about 15cm of fresh-ish snow on top of various layers of hard and soft. I thought the skiing was going to be terrible. In the end, the upper half of the ski was tolerable, and the lower half was sublime (albeit quite tracked up).
In total, we got about 350m of vertical descent. The lower half, in the trees, was more open than I’d expected. Clearings in the old-growth forest here and there allowed for some really good enjoyable skiing. Had we not been keen to check out Beberui-sawa ベベルイ沢 (route guide coming soon) on the way back to the trailhead, and had there been more fresh snow, we would have lapped the slope a couple of times.
As it was, we scoffed down some lunch at the bottom of our run, donned skins again, and skinned back up to the main Giant Ridge.
Once we were back on the main drag, we were taken aback by the sheer number of guided foreign skiers skinning up the ridge. As we merged with the skin-track, we waited for an Italian group of around 15 skiers to pass.
We’d started at around 7:30am, and had already had a decent downhill run for the day, so we held back as they headed on up. Higher up on the ridge, there were even more groups, all readying to ski the Beberui-sawa bowl back down to the trailhead.
The atmosphere was somewhat festive. Everyone stoked to be there, despite the socked-in weather. Hoots and hollers resounded across the valley as people dropped in.
Once most of the groups had skied off the ridge, we also headed down. It was a nice run, and we’ll write up that descent soon. We did end up back on the main Giant Ridge, however, for the final descent. A heinous bob-sleigh run through tight trees. A Furano-dake classic exit.
We made it back to the creek crossing with tibias, eyeballs, and skis still intact, however, and enjoyed some clearing of the skies just as we made it back to the carpark.
We then duly hightailed it to Hakuginso for a well-deserved onsen soak.
