Teton Bros. x People - Akihiro Tachimoto - (1st episode)

We walk in harmony with nature and create products and a future with colleagues who share our values.

Teton Bros. develops products in the field with professional colleagues active in the fields of Japan and around the world.
How do the many people who have come together under the name of "Teton" - the Teton Brothers - interact with nature and build their lives? We will weave together the chemical reaction between Teton Bros. and people.

My father was definitely the one who got me interested in mountains and skiing.

--What kind of child were you when you were little?

I was always running around outside. Physical education was my favorite subject, and I think I was particularly good at endurance sports. Up until high school, I usually placed in the top three in marathon competitions.

When did you start skiing?

I was in the second grade of elementary school. I'm from Hanno City, Saitama Prefecture, and as you know, Saitama isn't a region that gets a lot of snow. But my father loved mountain climbing, skiing, and ice skating, and every weekend in the winter he would take me to the mountains in Gunma and Niigata. I had a lot of fun.

--So your father influenced you to ski.

My father loves mountains so much that he could even be called an alpinist. In 1972, when I was three years old, he went to Denali in Alaska, and when he returned from the expedition he was so tanned and had such a beard that he looked like a completely different person. Apparently he looked so striking, and my earliest memory of him is probably of my father's face at that time.

Before the McKinley expedition, my father pioneered routes on the rocky terrain of Mount Tsurugi in the Northern Alps, and apparently changed jobs many times in order to climb mountains. I believe that my love of mountains was largely due to the influence of my father.

-Did your father ever tell you stories about Denali?

I was shown photos of people walking on the Kahiltna Glacier, an incredibly vast glacier, and I heard many times that it was so vast that the scenery never changed, no matter how many hours you walked. I remember feeling an elusive wonder and an indescribable excitement at the fact that such a place existed.

--Your father understands mountains, so what did he say when you became a guide?

He said, "You're lucky you can go to the mountains so much." He also said, "Just make sure the customers are safe and try not to get hurt. And don't die."

What I've done so far is
I felt like it was all concentrated into one.

--Please tell us a bit about skiing. You started skiing in the second grade of elementary school. Is it competitive skiing?

No, I've always been into recreational skiing on the slopes. My main interest in elementary and middle school was mountains. So I joined the ski mountaineering club in high school, wondering if I could climb mountains. But there was a rule that winter mountain climbing was out of the scope of activities. So, I thought, "What? Well, then I can't climb snowy mountains!" (laughs). So I decided to take up competitive skiing in the winter.
Well, that was fine, I like speed and wanted to do alpine skiing, but Tatemoto is good at marathons so we talked about him trying out cross-country skiing. So I gave it a try and got a pretty good time. And then somehow I ended up competing in the Inter-High School Championships and the National Athletic Meet, and that's how I ended up being groomed to be a cross-country skier (laughs).

In the end, I was completely devoted to cross-country skiing for seven years until I graduated from university. I had decent results, and I didn't want to lose if it meant I was ranked, so I worked hard at running. In fact, during training camps in high school, I ran 60km of cross-country skiing every day, and on my busiest days, I ran about 100km. Basic things like running will show results if you keep at it. It was really hard and I hated it, but I thought it would be better to keep doing it, so I kept doing it.

--That doesn't seem like a distance you could cover in one day... What alpine skiing did you want to do back then?

So I thought of cross-country skiing as cross-country skiing, alpine skiing as alpine skiing, and mountain climbing as mountain climbing, all as separate activities.

-How did your somewhat stoic ski lifestyle, centered around cross-country skiing, lead to the freedom of powder skiing?

After graduating from university, I got a job and worked as a salaryman for a while.
At the time, a senior from my university ski club lived in Hokkaido and invited me, saying, "Tatemoto, the snow here is amazing, come and ski sometime." So, I stayed in his room and skied the powder, and it was truly amazing. It was deep, wide, and free. I was so happy to discover that skiing could be this fun.

Above all, in the snow-covered mountains, you can walk anywhere you want. You can really decide everything yourself and face the mountains. The things you love are right in front of you, and you have the tools to access them, and you can use them pretty much how you want. It felt like all the things that had been separate up until now, like mountains, hiking, and playing outside, had all come together and melted into one.

Once you get to that point, there's no stopping it. Back then, there wasn't even a term for backcountry skiing, so everyone just called it mountain skiing, and I became more and more absorbed in it. For a while, I commuted to Hokkaido to ski, but after about two years I quit my job and moved to Niseko.

--So that's how your powder-filled life in Hokkaido began.

After all, back then, no one wanted to ski on ungroomed snow.
There were no tracks anywhere. Every day, the only word that came to mind was "It's the best!" After a few years of such a happy season, I suddenly came back to reality.

--What happened?

There were no jobs. I wanted to ski every day in the winter, so I wanted to earn a good income during the summer. But there weren't that many jobs in Niseko at the time.

A chance encounter turned my life around

--That's earnest.

So, thinking there would be plenty of job openings in the city, I moved to Sapporo. One day, sitting at the counter of a bar I'd become familiar with, I was talking about how I wanted to go to a mountain called Denali in Alaska. It was a mountain that my father had always told me about, and I wanted to climb it someday. I wanted to see with my own eyes the scenery I'd heard about. Then the guy sitting next to me said he wanted to go too. We got excited and said, "Well, let's go together!" and a year later, I actually went to Denali with him. That person was Mr. Hagi (Yutaka Hagiwara), who would later run a guide company called Moonflower. This encounter would greatly change my life.

-What do you mean?

To save up money for the Denali expedition, I was introduced to guide support jobs such as porter and tail guide. Until then, I had no idea that there was a job called guiding, so I was surprised to learn that I could earn money by climbing a mountain. It's like a lie that I can earn money doing what I love! There's no better deal than this!! I was overjoyed. When I think about it, my decision to go to Denali was what first led me to learn about the job of guide and to decide to become a guide.

-What was your impression of Denali?

I've been to Denali a total of four times, but this was my first time, so it was extremely tough.

I had never been to a place with such thin air before, so I summited with a sense of unease, thinking that I was beyond my abilities and that I had ended up somewhere I shouldn't have been. But when I came down the mountain, I thought it had been fun and that I wanted to climb it again.

-While climbing, did you remember any stories your father told you?

I was out of breath and my body was tired, so the pain was taking over and I didn't have time to think about anything else. But I took the ice axe with me, the old wooden shaft that my father had used on Denali. How can I put it, I wanted to take that ice axe to Denali one more time, and I wanted to climb with my father's equipment. I think in that sense I had a bit of respect for my father.

This is how Tatemoto discovered the option of becoming a guide and began to work towards it. He loves playing outdoors, mountains, and skiing, and is blessed with great stamina. All the things he had been doing since he was a child came together when he discovered the activity of backcountry skiing. Before long, Tatemoto became passionate about skiing in the mountains, and he began to expand his activities all over the world.

[Continued in Part 2]

Akihiro Tatemoto <br>Head of NORTE, a mountain guide office based in Hokkaido.
During high school and university, he was active as a cross-country runner in the National Athletic Meet, Inter-High School Championships, and Inter-College Championships.
Fascinated by the powder snow of Hokkaido, he moved to Hokkaido in 1996 and began working as a mountain guide.