After New Year’s Day, we’ve spent 7 of the last 8 days skiing here at Niseko Village and the adjacent Grand Hirafu. We’ve experienced quite a variety of conditions as well as a bit of the region’s famous Japow.
Niseko United
Four ski resorts at Niseko operate together as Niseko United. They are all operated by different companies and do sell tickets that are only valid at their individual resorts, though the pricing is only a little bit more than buying a ticket that covers all of Niseko United.
There are a variety of ticket options. On this trip, we ended up buying one day pass and multiple 12-point passes. We never skied enough to make the day pass worthwhile. The 12-point pass costs 6200 JPY, or roughly $3.25 USD per point. A one day pass is equivalent in cost to buying 20 points.
All the gondolas at Niseko United cost 4 points per ride, regardless of the length. This pricing is a pretty nonsensical for some of the extremely short gondolas at Niseko United which mainly seem to exist to provide access to some of the hotels that are lower than the resort’s lifts. Lifts generally cost 1 or 2 points, though all the ones we used only cost 1.
The biggest downside to the 12-point passes is that they can’t be recharged in any way. Once they’re fully used, you need to go buy another pass. It also isn’t clear how sensitive the ticket gates are so we ensured we never had multiple passes on us at a time.
Skiing
This is our first time skiing since I tore my ACL during the pandemic in 2021 at Arapahoe Basin. At the time, we were pretty solid intermediate skiers and could handle just about any intermediate run that didn’t have moguls. It has been over three years now since we last skied. At this point, we’re down to being easy skiers and trying to work back to being able to do intermediate runs. It probably would have made sense to do some practice skiing before coming to Niseko but we didn’t really have a chance to do so. This ended up making Niseko more challenging than it should have been as the majority of the terrain here is at the intermediate level.
Niseko Community Chair
Some of the easiest skiing at Niseko Village is via the Community Chair. The lower station of this slow double lift is right next to the Hilton Niseko Village where we have been staying.
The ride takes about 6 minutes and travels over relatively flat terrain. It goes through a bit of forested area and over easy trails below. It was quite beautiful on the morning of the 2nd on our first run of the day.
The lift offers a pretty decent view of some of the upper portions of the mountain at the end. But, the top of the mountain is masked by the lower terrain.
The Hilton can be seen from the upper lift station. We were early enough that there was a bit of untouched and ungroomed snow on the trail.
There are two choices after getting off the lift. Either head back to the base to ride the chair again or take the gondola, or go to the south to access Niseko Village’s other base area lifts.
On this first run, we headed directly back take the lift again. The gondola was significantly busier than the Community Chair.
From the Community Chair
Around the Community Chair
Niseko-yo
When staying at the Hilton, its easy enough to simply walk over to Niseko-yo. But, it can also be accessed from the slopes.
We decided to change our skis on the 2nd after doing a bit of skiing that morning. We followed the signs to access Niseko-yo, which can be done from the tops of any of the lifts at Niseko Village. It’s hard to tell here but you end up on some very flat terrain which crosses a bridge over the road that leads to the Hilton.
After that flat portion, you pretty much just ski right into Niseko-yo! This would probably be an extremely spectacular view if Mount Yotei was fully visible!
Niseko-yo, as seen from the north between the buildings at the Hilton. Village Sports, the stop where we rented our skis from, is in front of us.
The view to the northwest. We never approached Niseko-yo from this way.
Banzai Chair
The Banzai Chair is Niseko Village’s western base chairlift. It provides access to easy trails as well as a few very short intermediate sections.
Like the Community Chair, the Banzai Chair is pretty slow. The total ride time is actually less than the Community Chair, at about 5 minutes, as the route is not as long. However, it is substantially steeper, particularly at the middle of the route.
Generally, it was never very busy at the Banzai Chair. One morning though, there was this extremely long single file queue. This is quite different from the US where typically the loading area is configured to have multiple lines which then merge. We never really saw this at Niseko. Either there would be a super long single file line like this or there would be just a mass of people trying to access the lift.
Another difference we noticed was related to lift boarding. We generally never saw unrelated groups ride together. Very different from the US where the norm is to maximize capacity and where there is sometimes a singles line to aid in doing so.
This big blue bear sculpture is accessible from the Bamzai Chair if you take a right upon arrival. Turning to the right quicky leads to an expansive and flat open area. When the weather is good, you can see Mount Yotei in the distance! While we did see Mount Yotei a few times on this trip, we unfortunately never saw it while we were here by this bear.
The view looking up from around the blue bear. Other than the extremely narrow green trail which we tried on New Year’s Day, its all intermediate and difficult territory up there. In the past, this section of intermediate would probably have been something that we would have considered to be pretty easy. We didn’t quite work up back to that this trip.
There is a fairly steep green section right beyond the blue bear. It’s probably not the steepest green on the lower part of the mountain but is definitely the busiest.
One day, we were trying to see if there was a place to sit down and rest without having to go back into the Hilton. We ended up finding this purple deer instead.
Not sure if this is a Japan thing or a Niseko thing but there seems to be lots of unused infrastructure up on the mountain. This seems like it is part of an old gondola. We also saw other unused lift towers and cables up on the mountain as well.
From the Banzai Chair
Around the Banzai Chair
Niseko Gondola
The Niseko Gondola is the gondola that is directly adjacent to the Hilton. It is also right next to the Community Chair. We made just four trips on this gondola, going up and down for Hatsuhinode on New Year’s Day and twice again going up to ski.
Although we did see some extremely long lines at the gondola at times, it was often more reasonable like this.
Grand Hirafu
We ventured over to Grand Hirafu on just two days during our trip, accessing it via the connecting trail above the Niseko Gondola.
To Grand Hirafu via the Niseko Gondola
We photographed from the gondola the first time we ascended for skiing. The second time, we didn’t as it was one of the snowiest mornings that we had encountered with high winds. There was nothing really to see from the gondola!
We decided to ski Grand Hirafu on the 3rd. That morning, the weather was pretty good. There was unfortunately a long slow line to access the gondola as this gondola just seems pretty slow.
The view we had from the gondola was much better than when we rode it up and down for Hatsuhinode!
A short trail connects Niseko Village with Grand Hirafu. It ascends a small hill, meaning it requires a bit of uphill travel in both directions. We had a nearly cloudless view of Mount Yotei from here!
Mount Yotei is basically a half-height Mount Fuji. It has the same perfect volcano shape and like Mount Fuji is taller than anything else nearby.
Shirakaba
After going up the hill and skiing down the other side, we were in Grand Hirafu. Our intent was to take the easiest way down, which seemed to be via Shirakaba from here. We started out at, more or less, just above treeline. Looking up to the northwest, we could see the upper portions of Niseko Annupuri.
While Niseko Village has pretty good signage, we came to realize that Grand Hirafu is the exact opposite with generally terrible signs. Shirakaba is identified as an easy trail on all the maps but is labelled as intermediate up on the mountain.
This was the steepest section of the trail. We’ve definitely skied steeper slopes, just not since my ACL injury.
Up ahead, we could see the upper station of Grand Hirafu’s Ace Gondola as well as the lower station for the Ace Pair Lift #3, which goes to the top of Shirakaba.
Green
Shirakaba ended at the Ace Gondola. We headed towards a green trail named Green.
These three trees are thoughtfully padded! Though if you hit a tree with even a little bit of speed, this padding likely isn’t going to make any difference. Maybe it is intended to protect the trees and not the skiers?
We continued to have a beautiful clear view of Mount Yotei as we headed down. The many buildings of Hirafu below could also be seen.
Soon, we were down by the Ace Gondola. Unlike the Niseko Gondola, the Ace Gondola is of a modern design.
Ace Family Lift
We decided to try the Ace Family Lift next. This lift starts below the Ace Gondola and goes up above it a little bit.
We didn’t take any photographs on the easy trail down. It was mostly pretty mellow. Once we loaded onto the lift, we noticed this heart shaped snow duck display below us!
The Ace Family Lift is a modern detachable lift and takes just 3 minutes to get to the top.
A beautiful view of Mount Yotei from the lift’s upper station.
We did the Ace Family Lift once more time but the trail down wasn’t particularly compelling so we decided to call it a day.
We skied down to the Ace Gondola and walked over to the Welcome Center to catch a bus back to the Hilton.
Holiday
We returned to Grand Hirafu on the 8th to ski Holiday, the longest green run by far at Niseko United at nearly 3km in length. We again took the Niseko Gondola up and crossed over to Grand Hirafu.
As stated previously, this was the snowiest conditions that we’ve skied in so far here. It was snowing hard with limited visibility and high wind. The lifts going further up the mountain were not running.
Looking back at the Niseko Gondola, the view was bit reminiscent of our Hatsuhinode experience on the 1st, though with much more snow and wind.
Definitely not the greatest conditions for the poor signage at Grand Hirafu!
We started off on Shirakaba again. A very different experience compared to when we were here on the 3rd though! This was our first real Japow experience. It was pretty easy to ski as this trail is groomed underneath the fresh snow, though it was a pretty different experience for us as we don’t have any experience with Japow.
We ended up taking a short break in the restaurant next to the Ace Gondola before heading back out to continue on. The Ace Pair Lift #3 was pretty busy, likely because all the lifts higher up were closed.
We previously mentioned that signage here is poor. That didn’t help as we were trying to find the Swinging Monkey lift, which we needed to take to access the Holiday trail. We’re used to the big signs in the US that are at pretty much every junction, similar to the ones at Niseko Village. It also didn’t help that the official trail maps are not particularly detailed and just give a general idea of what is where.
We ended up using OpenStreetMap‘s ski piste data via the OsmAnd app to try to figure out the proper way to go. OpenSnowMap has a good web based view of Grand Hirafu using the same OpenStreetMap data. We figured that the best way to go was basically the same route that we took when we were here before, except try to stay as far to the left, or uphill, as possible.
Hey look, a map! And a sign! This map is rather useless as the text is so tiny! But, at least there is a yellow sign with Swinging Monkey on it.
We could eventually see the lift through the heavy snow.
The Swinging Monkey lift generally goes over some steep terrain. It was quite beautiful as all the trees were encased in fresh snow.
Upon arriving at the top of the lift, we needed to find the easiest way to Holiday. It wasn’t easy due to the heavy snow and lack of useful signage.
We turned left from the lift and basically skied in a straight line to the south. It was definitely not obvious that this was the way to go. However, the alternative was a difficult slope that parallels the Swinigng Monkey lift.
Just as a small illustration of how terrible Niseko’s official maps are, this is the area where we are. One conclusion to be drawn here is that one cannot get from the Ace Hill Rest House, which we had stopped at, to the Swinging Monkey lift without going uphill. Not true, no uphill travel was required. It also makes it look like the green trail near Swinigng Monkey is below the top of the lift and requires going to the right. Nope, its basically just a straight shot to the left after getting off.
Anyhow, we managed to go the right way thanks to OpenStreetMap data.
We passed under the Swinging Monkey lift to head to Holiday. Hopefully!
This is Holiday? Maybe?
It did seem like we were on the right path as we continued skiing.
One of the warnings about Holiday, which isn’t on all maps, is that there is a steep section on what is otherwise considered an easy trail. We did see it marked on Grand Hirafu’s own PDF trail map.
This is how the steep section looks from just above. It was pretty short though.
The section below was mostly pretty flat. In some places, it was too flat and impossible to keep momentum.
Holiday ends here, at the northern side of Grand Hirafu. This area was much busier than Holiday where we only saw a few people.
King Holiday Pair
After skiing down to the base of the mountain, we boarded the King Holiday Pair lift.
The King Holiday Pair ascends to more or less where the Holiday trail ends. Interestingly, it goes under the King Gondola. On the map, the trails to either side of the lift are Boyo and Kogen. In reality, it is one big open slope.
We recorded a few short videos from the lift.
For whatever reason, they put the Boyo-so restaurant above the top of the King Holiday Pair. Or maybe the lift was put in later and for whatever reason couldn’t be extended to a more reasonable place relative to the restaurant. Getting there from here requires walking through a bit of steep terrain. We didn’t go up to take a look but judging from the many skis in the snow, many people did!
We ended up going to the ticket office at the base to resolve an issue with my 12-point pass. My point balance on the ticket was lower than what should have been on it, likely due to the Niseko Gondola double charging me. We had noticed that it is possible for a pass to be dinged twice in a row if you don’t pass through extremely quickly. After talking to customer service, she saw what the problem was but couldn’t resolve it as it had happened at Niseko Village, or maybe because our passes were purchased from Niseko Village. We would have to go back there to resolve it.
As we were about to leave, she told us to wait and made a call. She talked to someone at Niseko Village and after a bit of conversion decided she could fix it. She was able to add the missing points back to my pass. A small reminder that the four Niseko United resorts are all operated by different corporate entities.
We ended up lapping the King Holiday Pair until we used up our 12-point passes, which were new when we left the Hilton in the morning. The Niseko Gondola used up four points and the Swinging Monkey used one, meaning we rode the King Holiday Pair seven times.
The weather was much more mellow during this time, though with some varying conditions.
To return to Niseko Village, we decided to walk over from the base of the northern King area of Grand Hirafu to the Hirafu Welcome Center to catch the Niseko Village shuttle bus. There should have been a way to ski there but we didn’t really find it. We ended up going on a rather icy route to descend down to the Welcome Center on foot. Definitely not the best way to go!
We ended up having to wait for awhile for the next Niseko Village shuttle bus to arrive.
We got some coffee from Mountain Kiosk Coffee while waiting for the next shuttle bus.
One More Day
Today was going to be our last day of skiing on this trip, but our bus from Niseko to Sapporo is late enough in the day that we can ski in the morning tomorrow before returning our gear and checking out.