Burton Girls Episode One recently dropped. It featured Kelly Clark and Kimmy Fasani, two epic snowboarders getting it done in the pipe, the groomers, and the powder. I’ve been rolling with Kelly and Kimmy for many years now and let me tell you they’re good people, they rip, they work their tails off getting photographs and film clips, on top of their competition, filming and appearance schedules. Impressive.
Kelly, Kimmy and I were part of a Burton brand shoot in Jackson Hole that ended up being a week of sun filled slush snow and epic groomers. Jackson Hole is a big mountain that’s unreal on a powder day, no arguing that, but these same big mountain resorts (like a Snowbird in Utah) offer some of the funnest groomer runs you’ll ever take, given the pure size and length of one run from top to bottom — some call it a “leg burner.” Our main man Ranyon D’arge and his talented crew take care of The Stash parks and halfpipe at Jackson Hole, a perfect compliment of man-made features to go along with all the natural offerings of JH. Plan a visit.
Just before hitting up JH for the Burton shoot, Kimmy and I did a ten-day tour around Japan searching for fresh powder, with the search yielding deep turns day after day after day! We landed at Tokyo Narita Airport, took a shuttle to Myoko, hunkered down at an establishment called Morino Lodge and rode daily at Akakura Kanko Resort. These were some of the longest powder runs we’ve ever done, one chairlift ride along with a fifteen-minute hike produced hundreds of knee to thigh deep turns, one after the other through open fields and perfectly spaced trees. It was a snowboarder’s dream come true when you think of Japan x Snowboarding x Powder.
After Myoko, we packed our bags and took the train back to Tokyo for our flight to Hokkaido, meeting up with our guide Mako upon landing in Sapporo. Mako is a certified guide and ski patroller who offered up his services on the basis of not revealing the (exact) location of our zone, which we gladly accepted. Ninety minutes in the car each morning brought us to a mountainous area where we’d hike 20 minutes to the top, then work the ridge rider’s right for continuous fresh powder, it was epic… as you would imagine! The hike was so easy once the boot track was in, so Kimmy and I just kept on making turns, shooting photos, hiking, making more turns, hop on the NoBoard for a run or two, use the Anti-Social Splitboard set up — you name it, we did it! How could we not?!
Peep the video for the motion footage of the journey, good times, great memories and plenty of photos brought to you here. You can find more photography on Kelly and Kimmy’s Instagram pages as well. Thanks for following!
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