Hot Powder

Club Med Sahoro delivers what Australian ski fiends have come to expect from Japanese ski resorts – an abundance of “Japow” and culinary nirvana.

- Jason Lee

Do you want to do the race?” asks my snowboard instructor. Race? It’s not a question you expect upon first setting foot on the slopes of a new resort. The dude has never seen me board and he’s asking me if I want to race? “Why not, let’s do it,” I reply, hoping my voice doesn’t betray my apprehension.

Perhaps I should have been ready to receive such a challenge. After all, this upmarket resort on Japan’s northern-most island of Hokkaido was the site of the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics. That knowledge serves only to deepen my fears as I find myself at the top of the steep launch platform of the famous Slalom course. This is not what I signed up for, I think as the timekeeper shouts, “ICHI, NI, SAN, GO!”

I launch myself off the platform with all my might as I proceed to gun down the drypowder run as fast as I possibly can. The first flag is upon me before I know it. I just manage to negotiate that one, clipping it with my shoulder as I pass, before I have to throw my weight backward to clear the next. My quads feel like they’re on fire as I blast down a mountain faster than I’ve ever done before.