The delight was written all over Mladen's face, even though much of it was obscured by a ice-encrusted snood and helmet, as he pulled the perspex chairlift down, protecting us from the horizontal snowfall. “Would you like to try some powder, Mike?,” my instructor asked.
A thick blanket of snow had fallen overnight on Kiroro, turning the forested hills and mountains of this corner of Hokkaido into a winter wonderland. A metre of the white stuff would pile up in just 24 hours, and it was only mid-December. Due to its proximity to the Sea of Japan, Kiroro averages a staggering 21 metres of snow at the 1,180m peak. That’s more than seven times the average in much of the French alps.
