Onze Ski Resort Hokkaido

Snow Cruise Onze is aptly named because it’s ideal for those who want to cruise on mellow groomed slopes. Onze Ski Resort is one of the Otaru ski areas and is mostly frequented by the locals, with night skiing quite popular. The Onze ski area is open until 11pm, which is part of the source of the nomenclature of Onze ie 11 in French. We don’t rate Onze as 11 out of 10 because it’s a small, mostly mellow ski area that’s unlikely to excite powder hounds too much.

Pros and Cons of Snow Cruise Onze

Pros

• The views over Ishikari Bay are lovely on fine days, and the night views over the city are good.
• It’s usually quiet on weekdays, unless the school kids are out in full force.
• It’s good for beginners.

Cons

• The ski area is small.
• Storms can pummel the ski area and winds come straight off the Sea of Japan so sometimes it’s freezing cold sitting on the lift.
• Onze is reasonably low elevation, so the snow isn’t always pristine.

Pro or Con Depending On Your Perspective

• Day passes are expensive considering the limited infrastructure on offer, but at least there are a few ticket combos that save yen.

Onze Ski and Snowboard Terrain

Onze Ski Resort is a small low elevation ski area with only 9 courses and 208 metres of vertical, from 300 to 100 metres.

Onze Ski Resort only has a quad chair lift and a pair lift. The pitch near the top of the quad hits a maximum of 30 degrees for a couple of short black runs, whilst the lower part of the quad chair has the beginner runs, so unfortunately for non-beginners, the lift is run at a slow pace. The pair lift services a couple of intermediate runs which are suitable for confident beginners. The main challenge comes from avoiding the many snowboarders that think it’s OK to sit in the middle of the slope.

The off-piste trees are mostly too close together to provide much in the way of tree skiing fun.

There used to be a half pipe and park features, although you can still play in the remnants of the pipe.

Onze Snow

Snow Cruise Onze gets plenty of precipitation considering its proximity to the coast, and in winter this usually falls as snow. The elevation may be a detractor from snow quality at times, but on the plus side, the aspect of the ski area is mostly northeast facing.

The ski area used to aim to open the season on the 11th November (hence the name Onze) but the snowmaking machines are no longer operated.

Where is Snow Cruise Onze?

Onze is 15km southeast of downtown Otaru and 24km northwest of Sapporo in Hokkaido Japan.

If you’re driving, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a car park considering there are a few of them. If you need it for GPS navigation, the telephone number of Onze is 0134 622228.

If you don’t have a rental car, there are daily buses from Otaru to Onze with Resort Liner that will get you there late morning. The Onze buses stop at hotels such as the OMO5 Hotel Otaru and the Otaru train station.

There are also buses from a few Sapporo train stations.

See the Otaru overview regarding other ski areas in the vicinity of Onze and Otaru.

Accommodation

There is no accommodation at the base of the Onze Ski Resort but it’s easy enough to commute from the small city of Otaru, and there are lots of Otaru hotels to choose from.

OMO5 Otaru is a lovely boutique 4 star hotel and buses to Onze stop out the front of the hotel.

Otaru Hotel Listings

Facilities

The Onze ski resort facilities are somewhat simple and in addition to the day lodge, some of the services are housed in shipping containers, which is unusual considering how many Japanese ski areas have over the top day lodges.

There is a stereotypical cafeteria, a kids space where parents can take small children for play time, a small retail shop, a rental shop for equipment and clothing, and a ski and snowboard school (Japanese language).