There is a saying in the outdoor community: never leave good powder skiing to find good powder skiing. Same goes for good waves, good fishing, good climbing, you get the idea. Because, why travel halfway around the world when we who live in the Pacific Northwest are already sitting on a gold mine of fresh snow on any given winter's day? While Japan certainly delivers on the deep powder promise more often than not, so does Mount Baker, Crystal Mountain, and even our brave Snoqualmie Pass. So, if it's not the snow, what's the point? Why have I traveled there five times, with hopes of many more? It's the magic of yukiguni.

Yukiguni—snow country—defines the regions of Japan where Siberian winds cross the Sea of Japan and release some of the heaviest snowfall on earth. Over five winters in the mountains of central Honshu, these photographs explore the delicate graphicism that emerges from extreme conditions. The mountains near Hakuba and Myoko embody a striking juxtaposition: a delicate, graphic simplicity in the undulating foothills and the seeming fragility of resident flora like birch and bamboo, colliding with a savagery apparent in the rugged high alpine regions and the near-constant storms that batter these mountains with incredible amounts of snow and wind. This is winter as both architect and eraser, where violence becomes sculptor and storms leave behind only the essential.

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