Steep Deep Japan is my personal website dedicated my alpine activities in the Japanese Alps, with a bias towards my home town of Hakuba. Hopefully it will help grow a community of foreigner interested in real backcountry touring in real mountains in Japan.

How to use SDJ

It is a little like a diary (blog) + a regularly updated book collection.

• Core content is arranged in books.  The library is represented by the menu on the right hand side.  Not really like a blog. The most important content in the Book collection relates to Avalanche and snowpack data, along with some Trip Reports.
• Other content will be added via my own diary, like a blog. The categories are Damian's Mountain Diary and Damian's Weather Diary.  My Mountain Diary contains short recaps of most days spent in the mountains, but not ful Trip Reports.  The Weather Diary contains a daily record of snowpack and weather field observations.
• Nearly all pages (Diary and Books) are open for visitor comment.  Unregistered users get their comments checked by me before publishing.
• If you register you will see your own menu on the top right of the screen where you can track your own comments.

About Damian

• Born 1972 in Australia. Living in Hakuba, Japanese Alps.

• Lloyd is my dog, friend and companion like none other. We left Australia in 2000. Since then we teamed up with Mio, an ‘international’ Japanese woman whom we both respect and admire. Over the years we have lived concurrently in any of Japan, UK, Italy, France and Germany. Before meeting, Mio had spent a couple of years in Canada and I was living in Australia. I mention that because it is a big part of who we have become.

• I like Mountains.

• I dislike rules, television, celebrity, and most of all - suburbia. It upsets me that so many people live life by proxy. I have not watched a TV in over 10 years and encourage everyone to do the same. If you need entertainment, go outside and live life.

• I have only ever made one other website (amateur homepage) which I started in winter 2006.

Inspiration and Thanks

Inspiration for the content and my efforts to start this base/core for an information sharing community was motivated by the satisfaction I get from creating useful information for others about the absolute rapture of being alive in the mountains. 

Ken, a Japanese friend and veteran of Japanese backcountry telemark skiing, put some ideas in my head many of which I will build on during my spare time this season.

Pouring a few pre-bed schnapps in an igloo.

Mio and Lloyd relaxing in the afternoon sun after a nice morning of  touring