The three skaters skate in perfect harmony. On the left is Kimura Shunta, in the middle is Chiba Yasushi, and on the right is Imahara, who often accompanies the two.
Photo/ Yusuke Kunimi
There are two skiers who ski the mountains of Hokkaido, recording their adventures on video. Their names are Chiba Yutaka and Kimura Shunta. The videos they quietly upload to social media for their own satisfaction have been quietly gaining attention, so we decided to take a closer look at what kind of skiers they are. They don't actively participate in competitions, nor do they make a name for themselves by making videos. We interviewed these two skiers to find out more about their honest and unwavering approach to skiing
My desire to ski has gradually grown since my university days,
and I also make good use of the school system for skiing.
-First of all, could you tell us about your skiing history?
Kimura: "I'm originally from Aichi Prefecture and I've always had an interest in outdoor education and the outdoors, so I came to Iwamizawa with the hopes of entering the outdoor education major in the sports education program at Hokkaido University of Education, a national university. I
'd never skied before, but a senior asked me if I wanted to try skiing. When I answered yes, he told me to buy a pair of telemark skis on Yahoo! Auctions. They were Fischer Watea 78 skis, 30,000 yen including boots. The skiwear was Columbia, just like my senior was wearing. I knew nothing about telemark, so when the heel of my ski would lift up, I asked my senior, "Is this okay!?" and I've been doing telemark skis ever since."
Chiba : "I'm from Sapporo. I have six siblings, and my two oldest brothers were skiers, so I've been skiing with them since I was about two years old. My parents bought me a season pass to Mt. Moiwa Ski Resort, which was close to where we lived at the time, and they would take me to and from school. Sometimes they would forget to pick me up, though (laughs). I went to
the same university as Shunta, the University of Teacher Education, but we were on different campuses, so I was in Asahikawa. I was on the soccer club from middle school until my fourth year of university, so I didn't have many opportunities to ski seriously until I graduated.
Once I got to university, the grounds would get buried in snow, so I would occasionally go to Kamui or Santa (Present Park), which are close to Asahikawa. To this day, I've always skied for fun, not competitively."
-Where and how did you two meet?
Kimura : We were on different campuses, but we had mutual friends. That's how we met for the first time in our third year of university.
Chiba : That's right. The only place I remember skating with him properly was Sandanyama.
Kimura : I don't remember it at all.
Chiba: “At the time, Shunta was wearing the same Salomon jumpsuit that Mark Abma was wearing. It was really baggy, and he had Liberty Genome boots on his feet, and he was doing telemark skiing in that. I didn’t really know how good telemark skiing was, so I was like, ‘Wow, his traverse is so fast!’”
Kimura : "Traverse?! Isn't that skiing?"
Chiba : "My skating also felt a bit like my limits had been removed. I don't know if I was good or bad at it. Well, I still don't really know now (laughs). At the time I was obsessed with jumping off cliffs. I remember us pushing each other, and it's still the same now. When we came across a cliff, we would jump bigger and bigger. Looking back now, it wasn't a particularly high jump, but we pushed each other and gradually pursued bigger and bigger jumps. That's when I started watching Hoj (Erik Jörefsson) and I became conscious of his style of cliff jumping, where you just soar straight up."
-You met in your third year of university and started skating together, but even at your age you still push each other and skate like buddies. What was the trigger that led to that?
Kimura: "What is it?"
Chiba: "Shunta was the only one around me who loved cliffs and jumping, and who I could push myself to do the same. When I came back from studying abroad as a senior at university, we talked about wanting to skate together, but the opportunity never really came.
Then, just as the coronavirus pandemic began, Shunta's work load also decreased, and he had more free time to skate, so we started skating together."
Kimura : That's right. Before COVID-19, I was helping out as a guide at an inbound tourism company in the winter. It was surprisingly busy during the season, and I didn't have much time to ski with my close friends. So, that's why I started skiing last year.
--You mentioned studying abroad, but was that a kind of training for skiing?
Chiba : "Hokkaido University of Education has an exchange student program. If you spend a year studying abroad, your graduation date will be delayed by a year, but your tuition will be free. The host university is also free, so you only have to pay for living expenses. Frankly, the reason I decided to study abroad was for skiing. They have affiliated universities all over the world, and I didn't want to go to a place with a lot of Japanese people. Also, because of skiing and mountains, I narrowed it down to Bergen in Norway and Calgary in Canada.
There is a minimum score required to apply for study abroad, and although I tried hard, I couldn't reach Calgary, so I chose Bergen. Very few international students have gone to either place, so I didn't really care which one it was.
By the way, Alaska is at a level that even Shunta could get into."
Kimura: "Stop it, stop it (laughs)"
Chiba: "I thought that if I continued to be a teacher, I wouldn't be able to ski freely. So I went to Norway to just ski for one season."
--Where did Shunta go?
Kimura : For me, it was Anchorage, Alaska. I was torn between Fairbanks and Anchorage, but I decided on Anchorage because there were great ski spots like Turnagen Pass and Hatcher Pass near there, and the environment was better. I met some older guys there who love mountains, and they would take me there every weekend. But... I was so broke I couldn't pay my dorm fees, so I was forced to move out before Christmas, haha.
-So?
Kimura : "I was on a student visa so I really needed to be in Alaska, but I had nowhere to live, so I asked an acquaintance for help and found someone who offered to let me sleep in a minibus parked at a ski resort called Stevens Pass in Washington State during the season. I went there in January. I bought a season pass and commuted to the ski resort from the minibus until April. Then I got a call from the university and they found out I wasn't in Alaska, so my study abroad period, which was supposed to last until August, was canceled...lol."
Chiba : "I got scolded a lot, lol."
Kimura: "I was forced to write a really long letter of apology (laughs). I might not have been able to get the credits I needed to get into university, but I managed to graduate."
-Where did you get the motivation to start telemark skiing in college and go to Alaska?
Kimura : "In my first and second years, I just skied at the ski resort. I wasn't at the level where I could go into the backcountry (BC), and even when I went into the mountains I couldn't do anything, and I could barely make it down. The very first slope of Sandanyama looked like a wall to me. But even so, when I met Chiba-chan in my third year and saw him ski, I thought, 'That's so cool, I want to get better.'
It's strange to say I admired him, but that's what I thought. He pushed me to want to ski at that level. That was my third or fourth year. I also wanted to go abroad, and if I could ski, that would be even better."
The fate of skiing in the age of drones?
A system where two people ski and take pictures of each other
-How much do you two ski during the season?
Chiba : "I'm an elementary school teacher, so I spend my holidays skiing, usually about 60 to 70 days a year. But since my holidays are based on the calendar, it varies. Last season, the weather was bad, so I only managed to ski a little over 50 days. I'm sure Shunta skied a little more."
Kimura : That's right. I work as a guide, so I ski about 100 days a season.
--How often do you two ski together?
Kimura : We started skating together when Chiba-chan's school was on winter break. Since then, we've been skating together on most weekends.
--The weather and mountain conditions will also play a role, but where will you be skiing?
Kimura : We both live in Sapporo, so we often go to nearby places like Mt. Yotei and Mt. Shiribetsu. It takes less than an hour and a half to get there from where we live. We can ski long distances, so we went there a lot.
Chiba : "I went to Mt. Yotei once every three times."
-When you go to BC, is it usually just the two of you?
Chiba : There's one other guy. It's hard to keep a conversation going when it's just Shunta and me... His name is Imahara, and he lives in Sapporo. He's originally from the Hokkaido University ski mountain club. He knows about avalanches, rescues, and weather forecasts, plus he's an incredibly fast hiker. He's the leader of the snowplow, so he pushes us a lot on the climbs. Lately, he's noticed that we're trying to save our energy, so he's stopped making paths for us (laughs).
The day before we head out to the mountains, the three of us check the weather, the wind, and the snow conditions, and then we aim to head to a spot in Hokkaido with good weather. Most of our trips are one-off, day trips
-Do you ever go on overnight trips?
Kimura : "Basically, no matter where we go, we usually end up coming back to our home in Sapporo. At the beginning of the season, we like the northern part of Hokkaido, so we've stayed at an internet cafe in Asahikawa a couple of times. That might also be because neither of us drink alcohol. We don't go out to eat or to the hot springs after skiing and say, 'That was a great day!' That's something that's changed, I think."
Chiba : "lol"
Q: You two are skiers, but you also take photos and videos of each other's riding. We'll ask you about your methods later, but what is your purpose?
*Chiba's Instagram account has "earn your turns ." In Chiba's words, "earn your turns" means "to earn your share of climbing and skiing with your own two feet, and to think about and be particular about a single line." In addition to Chiba's aggressive riding, the footage capturing various mountain ranges in Hokkaido from the air is a must-see.
Chiba : "Well, for me it's self-satisfaction. I don't usually think about that sort of thing at all, so I thought about it a bit, and while it's self-satisfaction, it's also a way to express myself. Also, I really think it's a way to give back to the people who support Gear, or to repay the support they've given me."
Kimura: "Up until then, we had been filming videos amongst ourselves. We thought it would be a small way to give back to the manufacturers, and perhaps even get them into the media. But starting last season, we started doing it ourselves, because the places we go to are quite unusual, and the walking time is six or seven hours, so there are very few cameramen or people who are willing to work with us. Even in our community, there are very few. So, if we wanted to leave behind footage, we thought the best thing to do was to film it ourselves."
--I see. So your main goal is to give back to the manufacturers for their support? What do you hope to achieve by expressing yourself through video?
Chiba : "How about it, Kimura-kun?"
Kimura : I love telemark skiing. My theme is how to ski coolly in nature, so it would be best if I could express that through BC. However, I don't have any particular desire to compete in freeride competitions. It's not like we're doing it for fun, but I just have a strong desire to ski and do telemark skiing.
Telemark skiing is not a popular sport, so I hope that more people will see me ski and want to try it. I hope to create a strong community like that in Hokkaido. That's one of my goals, and it's an extension of the fun I have."
-What do you think makes a cool telemark ski?
Kimura : "Alpine skiing is incredibly fast, and the sense of speed is overwhelmingly different. So my goal is to push up steep slopes on an unstable vehicle called telemark skiing, fly over cliffs, and descend quickly. In my opinion, there are very few people who can go as fast as Chiba and drop straight down a slope. You can see this clearly in the video, but even in Japan, there are very few people who can ski down steep slopes or streams at that speed. I think it would be cool if I could express that in telemark skiing. I haven't seen much telemark skiing like that."
-What about Chiba-kun?
Chiba : "Well, if you think about it, I guess leaving a video behind is something to be proud of. Dropping a steep slope vertically. The same goes for the pole (Dearhorn) that I made myself. At the core of it all is the desire to do things that no one else has, to not have what everyone else has.
There are a few videos of the mountains in Hokkaido, but there aren't many objective aerial views of skiing in amazing places or records of how fast people are skiing. So I feel like it's my destiny as a skier in this drone era. I think this is the time for me to be the first person in Hokkaido to do so, a pioneer
But drones are really troublesome. They're heavy, and if they crash, it can be costly and stressful. Even just skiing on the mountain is a lot of fun, but when everything goes well and comes together, the feeling of accomplishment is just incredible
To be honest, I hate climbing mountains. But once I get that feeling, I can't go back to a ski resort. My goal is to use a drone to take photos of all the places where people have ever climbed mountains, and to become the standard for mountain skiing in Hokkaido."
Kimura: "That's pretty annoying lol"
Chiba : "Once the video is uploaded to the web, anyone can watch it anytime. I hope people will want to surpass the skating in this video."
-Who was the one who suggested working with drones in the first place?
Kimura : "I started using drones at TAC Tokachi Adventure Club. I was filming alongside rafting guides. Until then, we had another person filming, but it became difficult for us to work together. So we decided to start doing it ourselves. We've been practicing little by little so that we can all film equally. We use
one drone and two transmitters so that anyone can film. After one person goes down, we lower the drone to the bottom and then raise it again. That way, the person who goes down after us can also film. It just happened that we settled on a style where we could film while we were filming."
--You're using two transmitters for one drone. Does that cause a lot of problems?
Chiba : "At first, there were a lot of problems. First of all, the battery. If it got cold, the drone wouldn't lift. The gimbal would freeze and stop working. Then, I learned something when I crashed it once. I connect my iPhone to the transmitter and use it as a monitor to control it, but when I crashed, the connection between the iPhone and the transmitter suddenly got cut off, and I had no idea where I was flying. I looked into why this was, and found that iPhone 10s and later models have a liquid detection function. In
the mountains in winter, even the smallest amount of moisture reacts and the connection gets cut off automatically. After experiencing and researching these kinds of minor problems, I now use an iPhone 7 Plus, which doesn't have a liquid detection function, as a monitor. There are so many problems, so to be honest, I don't like drones (laughs)."
--It seems like there are a lot of stresses other than just skiing
Chiba : Yes, it often happens that you take a photo of the first person, then when it comes to the second person, you have to wait for the weather and end up not being able to take a photo. I want to enjoy skating, though.
Kimura : "It can be stressful digging a snow cave and waiting for the conditions to be right for the drone to fly. Plus, it's not like you can just slide down and be happy. I'm always worried about whether I'll be able to get a good shot, or what the weather will be like when I fly. If only there was another person who could do it with just the drone... They're doing it amidst the risk of avalanches, so it really does take a lot of effort."
-Do you only take photos with drones?
Chiba : Last season, I only used a drone and a GoPro. Sometimes Kei-san (Kei Sato) would take me out to take photos. I also went with people I met in the mountains who love photography. I would go on climbs where the climbs weren't long and I could adjust my pace.
Kimura: "I'd like to buy a gimbal so I can take tracking shots with a single-lens reflex camera."
Chiba : "You can't do that on a big line though."
Kimura : That's true. Besides, we don't think about shooting on bad weather days. We don't really mind shooting on any slopes other than the big ones.
Chiba : "Especially over the past few seasons, I feel like I've been neglecting deep powder."
Kimura : That's right. He often goes to crunchy places. The conditions are good everywhere except the slopes he wants to ski, but the lines he wants to ski are hard. It doesn't seem like he's really enjoying the powder.
The highlight of last season was Oputateshike's explosive performance.
How will the activities of these two develop from now on?
--You've skied in mountains all over Hokkaido, but which one would you say was the best?
Chiba : "There are so many! It's hard to choose. I wonder which one. Shunta has been to Oputateshike once, and I've been there twice."
Kimura: "The southeast side."
Chiba : "That's right. It's called Bakuretsuzawa. The slopes there are great and we got some great footage. It was really great."
-How far will you climb?
Chiba : "When I went to Bakuretsuzawa with Shunta and the others, it took about five and a half hours, right?"
Kimura: "About 6 hours."
Chiba: "Imahara-kun, who I mentioned earlier, wasn't there at the time (laughs). The second time Imahara-kun took me around, it was four and a half hours."
-What kind of slope is it?
Chiba : "The elevation difference is about 700m. It's not as high as Mt. Yotei, but it's still quite long for a single line. At the beginning, there are two good launch pads near the peak, and after you fly from there, the line splits in the middle, allowing you to go on a narrow line or a wide single run.
The route I took then was a route that took me through a knoll that changed quite a bit, and then merged with a large stream. I wondered what the gradient was like. At first it wasn't steep at all. About 30 degrees. Then at the knoll it was about 40 degrees. It wasn't that steep."
Kimura: "However, depending on the snow, it can be unstable and there are lines where you might think you might get avalanched, so it can be quite nerve-wracking."
Chiba: "When I went with Shunta, it was a little too deep."
Kimura: "There was more snow than I expected, so I couldn't go very fast. It didn't feel that bad."
Chiba : "I think one of the transmitters was broken at the time. We couldn't film Shunta's skating, so he took over as the photographer. So he asked me to treat him to a meal at the number one ramen restaurant in Hokkaido, which is close to my house. That day, we went out to eat after we got home (laughs)."
Kimura: "That was the only one. Chiba's footage was that good. The skating and the filming really meshed well together. That was the most satisfying moment."
Chiba : But in terms of the most enjoyable skiing experience, I'd say Mt. Ashibetsu.
Kimura : Me too.
--How long does it take to climb Mt. Ashibetsu?
Chiba : "It doesn't take that long to get to Ashibetsu, about five hours."
Kimura: "If you go normally, it would take about seven hours, right? Our Russell manager (the aforementioned Imahara-kun) was there at the time. He didn't do much Russelling though. The pace was pretty fast."
Chiba : "When Imahara is there, I tend to rely on him. The tricky part of Ashibetsu is the final return trip. For a little over an hour, you keep crossing the river, going left and right. There are some great slopes for skiing, like Hontani and A-Coulonze, but I think that's why not many people come.
Crossing the river was a pain, so I thought about it a lot. I ended up using a pickle bag that you can get at the supermarket. First you take off your boots, put on your inner boots, put the pickle bag over them, and finally put on your outer boots. That way, the insides stay dry and only the shells get wet, so I thought I'd be able to cross safely. Outer boots have metal in them, so they're prone to tearing. I was putting them on carefully to avoid tearing, but Imahara-kun and Shunta urged me, saying that if I just pushed them in, they'd go in. I did exactly as they said, and after walking three steps, water got into my boots and I got soaked and came home. But it was spring, so it was okay (laughs)."
Kimura: "A pack of six pickles costs 150 yen. It's good value for money."
-Have you ever gone all the way to the top and then turned back?
Chiba : "Not even once last season."
Kimura: "There is a slight change in the line."
Chiba : "I do change my line and avoid knolls. Basically, when I can get away with just sliding vertically, I try to keep going without putting too much pressure on the snow."
Kimura: "That's right, going straight is the safest way."
Chiba : "In the interview with Akira Sasaki, I completely agreed with him when he said that going straight is the safest way."
-Is there anything you would like to do individually or as a couple in the future?
Chiba : "I have a clear bucket list. There's one big mountain line I want to try. It's the X-Couloir of Mt. Ashibetsu. Seen from above, the mountain looks incredibly cool. I want to do that with a drone in the dead of winter. And it's not just the X-Couloir, I want to ski the cool lines of Hokkaido's mountains in a cool way. I want to do that every year. Also, even if I manage to get footage, I want to update the parts that I'm not satisfied with every year. Even if I'm satisfied with the line, I might get nervous at the cliff, or I might not fly straight and fly a little sideways. I want to keep updating those little details."
Kimura : "I feel the same way. There aren't many telemark skiers skiing on steep terrain, and the number of people who can record it is even fewer. I think I'll be satisfied if I can ski aggressively with Chiba-chan and other friends who can push me. I'd also be happy if we could gradually build horizontal connections between telemark skiers in Hokkaido. I hope to build a telemark community over the long term."
Chiba : “So that’s why I started Telemark skiing.”
Kimura: "He's really good."
Chiba : "I started at Bankei, where junior skiers ski, and the slope is almost like an ice rink. When I tried Telemark skiing there, I found that the edges didn't work at all. I was getting so fed up with it that I kept getting swept up, but then I went to Canmore Ski Resort in Higashikawa for a night ski run after it had snowed, and I completely understood Telemark skiing."
Kimura: "You're quick to see things clearly (laughs). Even for me, it took me 10 years, and there were still times when I was still a bit skeptical... (laughs)"
--Thank you both so much. I look forward to your continued success
Yutaka Chiba Born June 20th, 1992. Originally from Sapporo. He mainly posts his riding videos on Instagram, flying over the cliffs of the mountains in Hokkaido and attacking narrow chutes, and has fans both in Japan and overseas. He also runs
deerhorn_poles" Supported: @paddleclub_sapporo @armadajapan
Instagram: @yutakachiba.newaccount
Kimura Shunta Born May 17th, 1991. Originally from Aichi Prefecture. Based in Sapporo, he skis down the ski resorts and mountains of Hokkaido. His riding style, which involves pursuing speed and carving aggressive lines with telemark skis, has attracted attention. In the off-season, he runs
Friluftsliv, Sponsored by: @sweetprotection_japan @pow_mas @deerhorn_poles @woollayer
Instagram: @dadadadadavo603