Conditions Report
This report is from Saturday, January 11
A taxi. Two trains. The London Underground. Two airplanes and a bus.
London. Beijing. Sapporo.
72 hours with little sleep.
This brought us to Niseko, Japan, to tick off a bucket list destination and experience two weeks of the world-famous JaPOW.
- Related: Japanese Ski Resorts in Hokkaido Start 2024-25 Season with Best Early-Season Snowfall in 68 Years
The omens were good. Hokkaido has experienced its best start to a winter in almost 70-years.
Niseko United is a ski area in Hokkaido, Japan, comprising four interconnected ski resorts: Grand Hirafu, Hanazono, Niseko Village, and Annupuri. It averages an impressive annual snowfall of over 50 feet. It is also on the Ikon Pass, the catalyst for our trip here.
All four areas are on 4,291′ Mount Niseko Annupuri, which faces the impressive 6,227′ Mount Yotei. You can see Yotei from almost every run at every resort, albeit from slightly different directions—the only exception was far skiers’ right of Annupuri when it was behind our peak.
We are staying in Grand Hirafu in a lodge 300 feet from the main gondola. It’s not quite ski-in ski-out. For that, I’d have to remortgage my house and sell a kidney. Thankfully, the lodge we’re at only cost a kidney.
We arrived a few days after a prolonged snowy period that dropped three feet of snow in 10 days. Our first few runs found us in the trees, still finding stashes of light, fluffy powder, the type you’d find in Colorado or Utah. However, there, it would have been skied out by midday.
The trees are super fun. There is plenty of snow, well-spaced, and few people. The aspens reminded me of Steamboat, Colorado.
The locals we chatted to are unhappy because it hasn’t snowed in 36 hours, claiming the conditions aren’t good. If that’s the case, then a bad day at Niseko is the equivalent of a good day at many resorts I’ve been to in Europe and North America.
The snow on the pistes is still soft, nothing wind-scoured, hard-packed, or icy. There’s still soft snow to push around. The trees still had untouched powder, and the few mogul runs we found were fun and forgiving.
It’s easy to travel between the four resorts, all accessible on the Ikon Pass; runs and lifts connect them. Today, we explored Grand Hirafu, Annupuri, and Hanazono. The lifts vary from modern 10-man gondolas to bubble chairlifts, fixed-grip doubles, and even singles (literally a wooden board suspended from a haul rope.) We saw one lift line today, which we avoided, but other than that, considering it’s a Saturday, we hardly waited for any chair.
The town of Grand Hirafu has blown my mind. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but a bustling nightlife food scene was not it. There are plenty of retail stores and restaurants, and at least three food truck zones where you can buy street food ranging from Japanese Ramen to pizza, subs, tacos, curry, sushi, kebabs, and ice cream. The atmosphere is excellent, with strangers from all over the world (but mainly Australia) congregating around small fires, eating food from paper wrappers, drinking Sapporo beer, listening to music, and having a good time. So cool. Us? We lined up for an hour for ramen at a restaurant. Lesson learned. We will book in future.
The weather calls for a mini dry spell (two more days) before over two feet of snow is forecast in the next ten days. We haven’t found anything steep yet, albeit we’ve only exited a couple of gates, so with more snow on the way, we hope to explore more of what this fabulous place offers.
Things we’ve found interesting and never seen before:
Every time the chairlift stops, there’s an announcement over a tannoy. It’s in Japanese, so I do not know what they’re saying, but I like to think they’re telling us why the lift has stopped and for how long.
The ski patrol snowmobiles have a nee-naw siren. Awesome!
The lift corales are more akin to Europe than North America–every man for himself. There are no singles lines either.
Hot coffee. In a can. From a vending machine.
The stereotype is real–the toilets, with heated seats, are like spaceships!
All gondolas give snowboarders a ‘hood’ to cover the top of their boards so they don’t damage the gondola glass.
I haven’t seen a single sticker on anything anywhere.
Everything is automated, from waiting in line to ordering food and drink and paying; a touchscreen or machine is involved somewhere.
The weather changes in seconds. I spend much time in the mountains, skiing, running, climbing, etc., so I know how quickly the weather can change. However, here, it’s almost instant. We skied down a short run in bright blue skies and sunshine, and by the time we returned up the same chair, it was cold, windy, and whiteout, just like that.
This is my first time traveling east, and the time zone difference messes with my head. I have no idea what time it is where my worldwide colleagues are. When I’m in Europe or North America, I know instantly.
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