The hotel lobby smells like kerosene. I’m with Eric Jackson at the base of a ski area called Ikenotaira. It’s cold and overcast. The streets are bare. The elderly woman behind the counter has a round, cheerful face. She wants to talk, to show us how the antiquated heater in our room works. We want to sleep.

It’s quiet—weirdly quiet in this place I first heard of a decade or so ago. Someone told me it was “the Mt. Baker of Japan.” Myoko Kogen sits about 175 miles northwest of Tokyo and 30 miles south of Joetsu and the Sea of Japan, on the other side of the range from better-known Hakuba. It’s where Japanese legend Shin Biyajima grew up riding. He’ll meet us tomorrow. Communication has been sparse as Shin is tending to a newborn baby at home in Nagano and just wrapped up working behind the scenes for the Natural Selection Tour’s Myoko-based duel.

It’s funny how little specific info we’ve been able to glean from the internet on what is, by all accounts, a well-trafficked part of Honshu, the most populous island of Japan. What we do know: volcanic Mt. Myoko is home to four distinct ski areas, none of which reach its 8,051-foot summit. There are at least four more spots within a half hour’s drive, ranging from single chair, beginner-oriented establishments to upscale Lotte Arai to the north, owned by its namesake Korean chocolate giant. It’s been an historically slow snow year on Honshu, but things are about to turn around. We’ve arrived right on time.

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