Freeride World Qualifier Diary: Part 1 - Hakuba 3*

I’ve just landed in Narita and I switch on my phone in the immigration queue. Immediately it starts to blow up with messages from my friends already on the ground: ‘Comp has been moved to tomorrow! Get here ASAP!’ Apparently the weather spirits are against us, and our weather window has been totally wiped out by the approaching storm, so they are going to run the competition a day early. Great. I’m due to arrive in Hakuba at 2am, and with the scheduled 6am gondola ride up the mountain I figure that will give me about 3 hours of disturbed, jet-laggy sleep to recover from my 18 hour journey from Vancouver before I throw myself down a mountain face to be judged along with Japan’s best freeriders.

Line scoping with friends - I'm bib #62!

It’s moments like this that remind me how crazy this whole thing is. I’m not a pro skier, being flown around the world by my sponsors to wherever the snow is, accompanied by photographers and film crews. I’m just a girl from the UK who loves skiing, who first entered a freeride competition out of curiosity, somehow managed to get 2nd place, and got hooked on competing. Just a year ago, when the Freeride World Tour rolled into Hakuba, I was only a spectator, and this qualifier event seemed so far beyond my reach. The realisation that this year I’ll be one of the competitors hasn’t really hit me until I hear about the change of schedule. I thought I would have a day to rest and get my ski legs, but there’s not much I can do now to prepare except try to get some sleep on the packed Nagano Snow Shuttle bus.

I’ve just come from Revelstoke, BC where five days earlier I competed in my first North American Freeride World Qualifier event. It did not go well. After four years of skiing bottomless powder in Japan, it had been a while since I’d seen an icy mogul. But the Revy locals are used to these conditions and they weren't afraid to send it. On the day of the competition, a cold wind was howling, and I was second on the start list. I watched the first skier drop in, skiing fast and strong, and disappear out of view behind a cliff. Moments later we heard blood-curdling screams, and then a voice crackling through the radio telling ski patrol to send the stretcher. Later I heard from my friends at the finish line that they could see her leg sticking out at the wrong angle. I stood in the start gate for 40 minutes, freezing and exposed, while they got the poor girl off the mountain. When it was finally my turn to drop in, I slowly survival skied the entire face, terrified of meeting the same fate as my competitor. The locals weren’t remotely put off though, and I watched the rest of the girls huck huge cliffs and ride out the bumps like it was nothing. To my dismay I finished in last place and resolved to do better in the next one.

But back to Japan. The land of the rising sun is living up to its name on this frosty January morning, with a rosy alpenglow so beautiful it makes your eyes sting and reminds you why you became a skier. They were right to reschedule the competition a day early - conditions are perfect, with bluebird skies and a fresh blanket of that legendary Japow.

During face inspection I catch up with friends from seasons past, and we scope our lines together, naming features and picking out takeoffs and landings. FWQ rules differ slightly depending on the location - in North America, the competition face is always in bounds, and athletes do a physical inspection, side-slipping through the face once before their competition run (and scraping off all the fresh snow, if there is any). In Japan however, the face is always out of bounds backcountry terrain, and only visual inspection is allowed - if an athlete is caught skiing there in the 30 days before the competition, they can be disqualified. A huge part of preparation is memorising and visualising your line beforehand, so you don’t get lost on the face and lose points for hesitating or getting cliffed out.

Every competition start gate is a scary place to be, but this is my first 3* competition, and I realise as I look down at this face that I’m in a whole new league. I try to visualise my line but all I see is an embarrassing vision of myself falling on the first turn. But the starter counts me in, and I point my skis and commit - I make a turn, then another. Still on my feet. The snow is perfect, still fresh but settled enough that you can trust it and open up huge, ripping turns. The mountainside is peppered with fun natural features - I jump two wind lips and find my way to the cliff I’d picked out. Not wanting to hesitate, I don’t hit it quite how I had planned, and ski straight into some sharky rocks in the run out. When I stop tumbling I see my ski standing solemnly in the snow in front of me, like a gravestone for my score. It’s an automatic ‘nul points’ if you lose a ski - but of course, it’s better than a broken leg.

Hakuba FWQ 3* Highlights Reel

I stagger to the finish line, then on to watch the awards ceremony - local freestyle Olympian Ayana Onozuka tops the podium in her first ever freeride event, earning herself a wild card entry to the Freeride World Tour. We finish with an afterparty in the Panorama Taproom, where I end up chatting to one of the FWT judges about riders’ mental health. ‘One person finishes super happy, and everyone else ends up depressed,’ he says. ‘Athletes put so much pressure on themselves, and it’s even worse if they have sponsors. It’s something we don’t talk about enough.’ I think back to Revelstoke and how disappointed I was afterwards, and suddenly I feel lucky that I only have myself to answer to. But this time I feel different - even though I finished last again, at least I know that I pushed myself as hard as I could. I decide to make this my strategy for all future competitions.

A few days later we get to watch the pros throw down for the first leg of the FWT, in a backcountry zone known as the ‘Big Triangle’. Watching the events on TV is awesome, but watching live is a whole different story - you get a sense of how impressive these lines really are, and the riders willing to take them on. Seeing Hedwig Wessel stomp a huge backflip (the first one landed in women’s FWT history) still gives me goosebumps when I think about it. Local hero Yu Sasaki, who also entered on a wild card after winning his qualifier, cruises his way to 4th place in the ski men’s category, and legendary snowboarder Travis Rice lays down a mind-blowingly flawless run that puts him on top of the podium.

Travis Rice talking through his incredible line in Hakuba gives us an idea of what goes through the mind of a competitive freerider

No freeride comp is complete without a raging afterparty, and this one is no different. Travis Rice is behind the bar pouring free shots for everyone as we all dance to the strange sounds of a Japanese punk reggae band. On the mountain the athletes seem like superhumans, but now they just seem like ordinary people. I think about how far I've come in a year, and wonder where I might be next year. I might have crashed out in this round, but maybe a spot on the tour isn’t so impossible as it once seemed.