A day on the mountain with Niseko Photography and Guiding. Deep powder, great photography and a few new friends.
For the last few years I have been a pretty strong advocate for the classic "No friends on a powder day" mentality but with Niseko Photography I remembered how much fun it can be with friends, or people I had never met. We went out with Caleb, our guide/photographer, and drove straight to Hanozono to grab first chair there in search of some freshies in Strawberry Fields. I was the only skier in the group but we had established we were all pretty advanced riders and would be keen to ski anything, as long as we got a good photo!
We started off hitting some drops at the top of Strawberry and had everyone trying to go for something big, sometimes taking 2 or 3 cracks at the same spot. The sun then came out and we made a beeline for Gate 9 to get some photos on the open face close to the bottom of Hanozono 2 which all turned out really well. Visibility at the top was pretty poor so Gate 3 and 4 had not been opened so we did a few runs through Gate 5 and got some of the deepest turns I've had all season. By now we've been skiing fresh tracks for about 3 to 4 hours and our legs are starting to give out and at the mention of a cold beer we all decide to call it for the day. In the afternoon of the following day I had an e-mail from them and all my pictures were up and ready to get and they must've had some pretty good editing because they definitely made me look like quite the good skier. For the most part, we skied in areas that I thought I was quite familiar with but ended up finding a lot of hidden gems in spots I thought I knew which was a .
I had a great time riding with the guys and with Caleb as he was a lot of fun to ski with and just chat to in general. I would highly recommend Niseko Photography to anyone looking to have a good time skiing fresh tracks with friends.
Kyle (Skier and traveller)
