Japow

Nagano and Hokkaido, both sides of the best snow on earth

Japow is what skiers call what happens when Siberian air crosses the Sea of Japan, loads up with moisture and dumps it against these mountains: ten to fifteen metres of dry snow a year. This route does both places where that happens: the Hakuba valley and Nozawa Onsen in Nagano, with an actual village and centuries-old public baths, then Niseko and Rusutsu in Hokkaido, where the real powder is. Including the Niseko Rules backcountry gates, the Yamabiko forest at Nozawa and a guided ski tour up Mount Yotei.

The itinerary, stop by stop

1. Hakuba5 days

   The valley that hosted the 1998 Olympic downhill: ten ski resorts beneath a wall of 3,000-metre peaks, around ten metres of snow a season, and in summer the Daisekkei snow gorge and the Tsugaike wetlands.

   The route starts in Hakuba because it is the easiest big snow to reach from Tokyo: the shinkansen to Nagano, about an hour and a half for some 8,300 yen, then the Alpico bus, just over an hour and 3,500 yen each way. If your flight lands late, the direct bus from Shinjuku takes around five hours and costs 6,400 to 7,800 yen depending on the date. What you find when you get off is not a resort but a twenty-kilometre valley with ten ski areas strung along it and the Northern Alps forming a wall at the far end. The valley floor takes around six and a half metres of snow a year, and higher up, considerably more.

   Five days are enough to treat the valley as a valley rather than as a resort. Two at Happo-one, the big mountain and the site of the 1998 Olympic downhill, with 1,071 metres of vertical and an eight-kilometre run from Usagidaira to the bottom. One at the far end, at Cortina and Norikura, which have the best tree skiing and sit about forty minutes away by shuttle. One at Goryu and Hakuba 47, which faces north and keeps the snow better. The fifth stays open, to spend wherever it has snowed. The shared five-day pass costs 53,400 yen; a single day at Happo is 9,800 in high season. Shuttles run every twenty to forty minutes, and after dark most people end up in a taxi.

   Going out of bounds here comes with rules worth learning before you arrive. You leave only through the gates at Goryu, Happo-one, Tsugaike, Norikura and Cortina, you hand in a mountain registration form first, and the resort takes no responsibility for rescue. People die most winters, in avalanches and head down in the tree wells at the foot of the trees, so without snow training you hire a local guide: 20,000 to 35,000 yen per person per day in a small group. To finish the day, the public baths at Happo, alkaline water at pH 11.2 that feels slippery between your fingers, stay open until nine, ten minutes from the slopes.

   What puts it in this route: Skiing at Happo-one · Backcountry with a guide, and the valley's rules

2. Nozawa Onsen3 days

   A 1,200-year-old hot spring village that also happens to be a ski resort: thirteen public bathhouses run by the residents themselves, water surfacing at 90°C in the middle of the lanes, 1,085 metres of powder-covered vertical above the rooftops, and, every 15 January, one of Japan's three great fire festivals.

   Day trip to Jigokudani / Shibu Onsen

   Getting to Nozawa means doubling back through Nagano: the same Alpico bus into the city, then either a direct bus in snow season or the shinkansen to Iiyama and the Nozawa Onsen Liner, twenty-five minutes and 600 yen. Check the bus timetable before you buy the train ticket, because the two are not coordinated with each other. The change is not in the snow, it is in the place: instead of a valley of resorts, a twelve-hundred-year-old hot spring village that also happens to ski, with lanes running uphill, steaming channels of hot water and walls of piled snow. You walk everywhere, but on a slope and over packed snow, which wheeled suitcases do not survive gracefully.

   After Hakuba, Nozawa feels cheap: 7,500 yen a day and 20,300 for three, for 1,085 metres of vertical between the village and Mount Kenashi. The powder is up top, in Yamabiko between 1,300 and 1,650 metres, along the untracked edges and in the birch and beech that opens up between runs A, D and E. That is inside the ski area, but it is neither marked nor patrolled: you go in with a partner in sight and you work around the big trees through the soft snow at their base. The four Yamabiko chairs close before the rest when it is windy. On a storm day you get up for the first gondola at 8:30; another day you ski the Skyline, ten kilometres down to the village.

   The third day leaves the village: Jigokudani, where the macaques get into the hot pool, reached by a thirty-five-minute walk through the forest from the bus stop, and on the way back Shibu and its nine bathhouses, which ryokan guests do in yukata with a master key. It costs you a day on snow and it earns it. What this route cannot have is the Dosojin Matsuri: the fire festival is always 15 January and you get here in February. The rest is there every evening, thirteen bathhouses the neighbours clean themselves by turns, with no front desk and no staff, and a hundred-yen coin in the donation box.

   What puts it in this route: The Yamabiko trees and the powder runs · Off-piste and backcountry with a guide

3. Niseko4 days

   Four linked ski areas on one pass, with a numbered gate system that opens or closes the backcountry each morning according to the avalanche bulletin. But the cone of Yotei is also walked up on foot from late June to early October, with not a single water source on the whole mountain, and this was potato and dairy country long before it was a resort: in August Kutchan throws its potato festival.

   The hop to Hokkaido eats a full day of travel and drops the route into its most expensive stop. What you find on arrival is four ski areas linked by one shared pass, Grand Hirafu, Hanazono, Niseko Village and Annupuri, and an international base where restaurants end the night with a DJ. Get the map straight: Moiwa, right next door, is not on that pass, and Rusutsu is a different town and a different resort altogether. Of the four days, two or three are lift days spent circling the four faces to find whichever one is in shade and still untracked.

   What justifies four days is the gate system. Niseko opens and closes numbered gates daily according to the avalanche bulletin; using them is compulsory, crossing the ropes never allowed, and a helmet and a transceiver are required. Break the rules and you lose the pass and pay for the rescue, which starts at a hundred thousand yen. This is not paperwork for its own sake: the system was set up because Niseko became the place in Japan with the most avalanche deaths. Above all of that sits Yotei, which is not an outing but winter mountaineering with a descent through the crater: it takes the whole day, it depends on the weather, and in practice you go with a guide.

   The uncomfortable part of Niseko is the price and the bubble. The antidote is four kilometres downhill in Kutchan, with a supermarket, cafes and ordinary Japanese prices, and in the baths around the valley: Yukichichibu, rough and strongly sulphurous next to the fumaroles, or Konbu, in the woods by the river. Goshiki, the prettiest of them, does not count in February, because the access road closes for the winter and plenty of guides fail to say so. For dinner, Sobadokoro Rakuichi has twelve seats and only a few sittings a day, so either you book weeks ahead or you eat somewhere else.

   What puts it in this route: Off-piste through the Niseko Rules gate system · Ski touring on Yotei

4. Rusutsu3 days

   Three linked mountains in the middle of Hokkaido farmland, with the most generous birch tree skiing in the country between the runs and Mount Yotei straight ahead. Plus a full-scale amusement park at the base, seven roller coasters and all, that turns the place into something else entirely from May to October.

   Rusutsu is forty-five minutes from Hirafu, there is even a day shuttle between the two, and it is the exact opposite. There is no village, no train reaches it and everyone arrives by bus; what there is are three linked summits, West, East and Mount Isola, thirty-seven runs and forty-two kilometres of them, with Yotei in front and the most generous birch forest in the country growing between the pistes. The birch slopes on Isola and East face north, are skied inside the resort boundary and hold for whole days without being tracked out; the Heavenly area is declared unpisted for the entire season.

   There are no gates here: you ski the trees inside the boundary and leaving the area is forbidden, with search and rescue billed to whoever does it. What kills in these birch woods is not avalanche, it is suffocation in the snow pit at the foot of a tree, so you always descend with a partner in sight and never one at a time all the way down. A guided day with the resort school pays off in a group, because you hire the whole guide rather than a seat: 97,500 yen for the day, for up to six people. Two warnings: the lift pass is the most expensive in Japan, 16,200 yen at the window and 12,000 online, and the complex is an eighties time capsule with a monorail and a carousel that you do not leave for dinner.

   What puts it in this route: Mountain Guiding: a powder day with a guide · Deep snow: tree wells and the resort boundary

5. Sapporo2 days

   A grid city laid out on the Ishikari plain, with a scrap of its original forest still standing downtown, and you can take the whole thing in from the Moiwa ropeway. You eat lamb grilled on a domed iron plate and a miso ramen sealed under a layer of lard that keeps the bowl scalding to the last mouthful; soup curry was invented here too. The city's own hot-spring town sits in a gorge of the Toyohira river.

   Sapporo closes the route because the plane leaves from here, but it is more than an airport formality. Two days split into one of snow and one of city. The snow day is Sapporo Kokusai, past Jozankei and still inside the city limits: seven runs, four lifts, snowfall comparable to Niseko's and none of its queues, about 6,000 yen for the pass or 8,800 with the return bus from the station terminal, ninety minutes each way and better with a seat reserved in advance.

   The city day starts with miso ramen, which was born here: Sumire set the template, with the broth sealed under a layer of lard that keeps the bowl scalding to the last mouthful, at around 1,100 yen. Then jingisukan, soup curry and the Nijo market, and the Moiwa ropeway after dark. If your dates fall in early February the Snow Festival takes over Odori, Susukino and Tsudome; later in the month you miss it, and to see it at all you need a bed booked six to nine months ahead. The Okurayama jump from the 1972 Games closes the circle that the Olympic downhill at Happo-one opened.

   What puts it in this route: Deep snow at Sapporo Kokusai · Sapporo Snow Festival (Yuki Matsuri)