We’d wanted to visit Akita Hachimantai on previous trips, but we couldn’t quite wrangle our itinerary to arrive on a weekend. This time we managed to arrive on a Saturday that was a bluebird day. There were only 15 skiers there, one lonely snowboarder, and various snowshoers.

The snow base was 190cm, despite it being a poor season. On top of a hard crust was about 10-15cm of fresh snow that was pristine quality.

We purchased 8 ride passes and had plenty of fun in the trees which were completely untracked, and then went up into the backcountry which had some short steep pitches.

You can see how we rate Akita Hachimantai against other ski areas on our Honshu ski resort ratings.
See our video here