Canmore Ski Village

Canmore Ski Resort is a small locals' ski area near the city of Asahikawa that is ideal for beginners. It doesn't get a huge amount of snow and isn't a top pick for powder hounds, especially considering there are steeper and snowier ski areas nearby. 

Pros and Cons of Canmore Ski Village

Pros 

• Canmore Ski Resort is good for beginners and those progressing onto intermediate status.
• Lift passes for adults are inexpensive and short duration passes are really cheap, as are night skiing tickets.
• Canmore Ski Village has a detachable quad chairlift.

Cons

• Canmore Ski Village sits in a snow doughnut and doesn’t get much snow.
• Even if there’s enough snow, the off-piste skiing is quite limited as many of the trees are too tight.

Canmore Ski and Snowboard Terrain

Canmore Ski Village is a small ski area with only 6 courses, 210 metres of vertical (246 to 456 metres), and 2 lifts. One is a pair lift for beginners, with child oriented seats so low that an adult with fatigued thighs will struggle to stand up from. When it’s not that busy, the Canmore ski area may close the double chair. The other lift is a fast quad chair and it even has a safety bar and foot rests. This doesn’t sound that exciting compared to world class ski resorts, but it’s pretty special for northern Hokkaido.

Both lifts are open for night skiing, which is pretty popular, in part because a “night games” lift pass is very inexpensive.

Canmore is a great beginner hill. The slopes either side of the double chair are perfectly mellow and really wide, so there is plenty of room for error. The other two beginner runs offer a nice progression. Intermediates might get bored quickly because there are just one and a half short red runs, and then you have to ride along the flats to get back to the lift. Advanced skiers may get really bored because there is one “steep” run that reaches a maximum gradient of 29 degrees, and that’s if they’re not too anal to close the Canyon run.

Off-piste opportunities are limited. There is a very small unfenced zone on skiers’ right that has mellow trees where it’s impossible to get lost. Otherwise the trees are zipped up tight with fencing and/or the trees are too happy and grow very close to each other. There are cliffs and steep sections to the skiers’ right of the Canyon run, although there are probably not too many seasons when the snow cover is adequate to cover the shrubby vegetation.

Canmore Snow

The average snow fall per season at Canmore is unknown, but it’s assumed that it doesn’t receive much snow because the snow base generally sits at about 70cm in the middle of winter. Snow quality is usually reasonable on-piste thanks to cold temperatures in the region, although the low elevation and west to southwest aspect are likely to reduce the snow quality at times.

Where is Canmore Ski Village Hokkaido?

This ski resort in Hokkaido Japan is named after the town of Canmore near Banff in Canada. Canmore Ski Village is located in Higashikawa town of the Kamikawa subprefecture of Hokkaido, and 16km east of the city of Asahikawa, which equates to about a half hour drive.

The Canmore ski resort prides itself on being the closest ski area to the Asahikawa Airport, although I can’t imagine too many people rushing off a plane to get to Canmore.

It’s in a similar vicinity to the famed Asahidake Ropeway, which is 35km to the southeast.

You’ll need to drive to get there. Canmore Ski Village is on google maps or the telephone number for GPS navigation is 0166-82-5001.

Canmore Accommodation

Despite being called “Canmore Ski Village” there isn’t really a village at the ski area. The only accommodations at Canmore are self-contained cottages for up to 8 people that are inexpensive.

Otherwise, the city of Asahikawa isn’t too far away where there are lots of well-priced Asahikawa hotels.

Facilities

In keeping with the Canadian theme, there is a small day lodge called Alberta that has a cafeteria, ski school, and equipment and clothing rentals.

The base area has a large greenhouse plastic tent for brown baggers, which is particularly unattractive. There are also various food trucks to cater for the hungry weekend masses.

Canmore also has a short cross country skiing trail.