For A Peak Inside The Japanese Resort Industry: Volume 2 – The Primary Concern "90% of all users of any ski hill are in fact terrible at skiing/boarding"

When I first heard the above spoken by a man that has made his living designing resorts around the world in January of 2001 I could hardly believe my ears. I thought to myself that the percentage surely could not be as high as that. I was not in a position to argue with him however, and still am not for that matter, but I decided that I would begin to conduct some informal research. This meant that I’d have to get out onto the mountain more and so I invited myself to go up on the first Gondola with the Guides each morning to get the place ready for the public when the resort opens at 8:30.

Setting up a mountain for the public is really an endless process. Every night at least twenty of the staff work graveyard shifts to groom the mountain etc. My venture with the Guides at least allowed me to go to bed at the regular time, but it meant getting up at 5 am to a freezing cold house without central heating, taking a shower, and driving to work in darkness. You have to change into your gear and be at a 7 am meeting where somebody from the graveyard shift updates the fifteen guides that will be heading up the mountain on the first Gondola at 7:30 am.

The Gondola ride up the mountain takes about twenty minutes and I found this time each morning to chat with each guide. The age of our guides ranges from 18 up to 60.

The ride is a good time to chat to everyone about his/her job as well as learn about loved ones. I can only imagine that the family and friends of each guide worry when the conditions are particularly bad and that like my family, they have gotten used to waking up/going to bed missing that person; But it is a well known fact that the ski industry is a "Hands-On" business that requires a high level of commitment from staff.

At the Gondola Peak the Guides start working by getting the snowmobiles warmed up and setting the nets and poles into the ground. The temperature here is colder by a few degrees and at 7:50 am you definitely feel it. Once the poles and nets here are set, we then all grab more of each and catch the first run of the quad chair up to the peak. This lift takes about ten minutes in good weather but more when it is stormin!

The guy who designed the ARAI mountain told me that this chair to the peak is the best one as it covers area above the tree line, but on stormy mornings it also is the place where one encounters the full force of mother nature! On days when the resort doesn’t open this lift to the public, the guides still go up and take care of business. It took me awhile to figure out why everybody wanted to ride this lift with me but eventually I realized that the extra weight I’m carrying helps to stop the chair from swinging so much in the wind. The lift guys try to find a quiet spot on these days to send the three or four chairs required and off we go. Mother nature does catch us by surprise from time to time, so the lift is stopped in transit and we start swaying big time. When this happens, I end up teaching the guides a song or two to try to dispel fears. The guides end up singing party songs from my colorful youth out loud until the lift starts up again.

At the peak of the chair on such mornings as those above, it’s a couple of degrees colder still. Once wind chill is factored in, it becomes obvious that only those with the strongest of spirits can do such work day in and day out. While we have had our fun on the Gondola and the chair, the mood of the guides quickly turns serious at the peak and the first thing that some do is pray to the mountain god via the small shrine up there. Fortunately, the area is partially sheltered from the wind and snow so the guides sometimes ask me to wait a few minutes while they establish whether it’s safe to proceed. These guys disappear into the storm and I wait for one of them to come back and tell me that it’s okay to follow him/her out from the semi-shelter.

On stormin days it’s really difficult to see but fortunately the guides use their instinct in some cases to keep us on course. We start to pull the nets out of the snow, place/drill the poles into the ground, and make sure to keep an eye on each other. It never fails to amaze me how fast these guys work their way down the mountain, but they must complete the process before we can open runs. Fortunately, the farther down you get, the more that the mountain shelters you from the winds blowing off the Sea of Japan.

We usually make it back to base about 9 am or so but the guides head straight back up the mountain for patrol duty. They will eat a cold lunch and after the mountain closes at 4:30 pm, they will pull out all the poles and nets so that the snow cats can do their stuff. The wild thing is that by the time these guys make it down to the drying room where their equipment is stored overnight, it is usually about 6 pm or so and already dark again outside. They will then have to walk to their cars, shovel them out of the snow and drive home only to have to repeat the routine almost daily during the season.

I needed to explain the above in detail as opposed to just touching on it the last time I wrote for Ski Japan Guide because I must impress upon each of you that mountain guides dedicate six hard months of each year to making sure that the general public have an enjoyable but safe venture out onto the slopes. From experience, I can say that the guides earn their uniforms day in and day out by putting their lives on the line to protect you, the customer. Poles and nets are not placed during extreme weather conditions each morning for fun but instead essentially to protect people from themselves. The guides have many reasons for placing things where they do, and you would be amazed out how quickly things can go wrong when warnings go unheeded.

There is nothing quite like riding on fresh powder and perhaps the answer is to provide more of in bound powder areas. Is a quick thrill of some powder out of bounds really worth risking not only your life but indeed in some cases several others as well? People should really think a little bit more about all the effort that has been put into bringing a ski resort to market, maintaining it and the guides and their families before traversing a rope or a net for a quick thrill. At the end of the day people just want to go back to where they started out that morning, and that goes for the staff as well.

Next time that I write for Snow Japan, I will explore the out-of-bounds bit further by explaining why resorts do not let people into these areas. I plan to cover not only insurance purposes, but also more important life and death matters related to such behavior. My colleagues have put in countless hard hours to ensure the safety of all our guests and despite the fact that we’ve never lost anybody in-bounds, still find it hard to accept that anybody would want to flout the Alpine Responsibility Code.....