I was fortunate enough to visit Ishiuchi on a powder day, after a reported 60cm of fresh snow. It was a weekday, yet despite all the fresh snow there weren’t many people around and there were no lift lines. Nevertheless the powder on-piste and the very small tree areas tracked out quickly, and even though there was supposedly 60cm of fresh, the snow had not reset and the bumps could be felt underneath and at lower elevation the slopes were quite firm. Just outside the resort boundaries it was easy to find untracked snow, whilst the steeper sidecountry wasn’t looking too attractive and was marred by lots of glide cracks.

It snowed for much of the day and all the lifts were running, unlike Gala which had closed the whole south area.

It was great to see the changes in lift infrastructure since our last visit. Some lifts had been retired, and the obvious change was the Sunrise Express chondola, although there were no chairs loaded onto the cable, just gondola cabins. The Resort Center was shiny and new, and in complete contrast to the old-school privately owned ski shops, as well as the restaurants and dated hotels, some of which remain an eyesore. The upside was that Ishiuchi seemed to still retain a mostly Japanese vibe and it was refreshing to see a couple of poorly translated English signs, which took me back to skiing in Japan in the early noughties.

Ishiuchi remains my favourite of the trio of Ishiuchi/Gala/Yuzawa Kogen, although that’s not saying much. For powder hound terrain and snow, there are better ski resorts in the area such as Maiko, Hakkaisan Kagura, and Naeba.
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The Alpina Resort group have no idea how to run a ski resort. Brand new Gondola never seems to work. No singles lines, so there was always a queue. Lifts open at different times on the mountain, so good snow is often gone and if you enter from the Hatsukaishi side of the mountain.
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It has snowed all night and was still snowing on the drive out to Ishiuchi. I was dropped at the little Hatsukashi entrance about 8.15am and swapped my ticket coupon for another discounted lift pass for the day. Studying the trail map I decided I'd try and make my way to the top of the resort as quickly as possible to get access to the nice looking designated 'tree run' courses.

Well that was my plan anyway, I got very distracted by the 10cms of snow on the groomers and triple that depth that had blanketed the entire resort, even low down on the K and M lifts near Hatsukashi entrance. I lapped the M lift about half a dozen times as it was just too nice to stop! Knee-waist deep light dry snow with barely anyone around. Paradise.

Visibility started to decrease as I made my way up C lift (a nice fast quad) and skied all the way down the long green run to the base of the gondola. Here it was much busier and there was a 5 min wait for the gondola, lots of Chinese skiers/boarders too. The snow started to fall heavily again as I made my way up to the top of the resort.

The lift layout of Ishiuchi isn't amazing, but then again I've visited a myriad of Japanese resorts where you can say the extract same thing and nothing can be as poor as Zao Onsen haha. Getting off at the gondola you either need to walk across to the slow H pair lift or up hill to the quicker G lift. If only they had placed the gondola 15 meters further up the hill!

It was much busier up the top of D lift and I saw a bunch of professional skiers/boarders (why do these people never wear helmets?!) with a film crew following them around as they slashed through the powder of the tree runs. Man those gals and guys can rip! My favourite run of the morning isn't marked on the map but was on the lookers left of chair C, waist deep fresh and you could either run out back to C chair or go all the way down to the top of K chair.

Overall Ishiuchi was my favourite resort of the few I visited. It had the most amount of obvious off-piste opportunities for a beginner powder hunter like me, and a few nice steep black runs to practice my carving on. I feel like this resort would cater well to a group of mixed abilities: lots of greens and reds for the intermediates with enough steep blacks and powder runs for the advanced skiers. It was fairly busy for a weekday and I was getting the sense that these three connected resorts of Yuzawa Kogen + Gala + Ishiuchi must get smashed on a weekend. I obviously got lucky with the snow conditions and was able to ski untracked snow all morning so this may of inflated my review, but I had a fabulous day :)
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Ishiuchi has lots of strengths for many skiers and snowboarders, particularly those who like to cruise around in between hot chocolates. It’s interconnection with Gala Yuzawa and Yuzawa Kogen is also a big plus.

Ishiuchi is not the best for powder hounds, so it wasn’t really our cup of tea. When we visited, the snow quality wasn’t the best (the cover wasn’t great and the snow was like super glue in places) so we didn’t get to see the resort in all its glory.

Some people describe the resort as rather European in style. Sure there are lots of restaurants lining the slopes which is a little European-esque, and some of the restaurants serve a Japanese version of Italian and German. There are a few European looking buildings, but otherwise we can’t really see any correlation to a European ski resort. And what were they thinking when they built that purple monstrosity building at one of the bases!! Also some of the slopeside restaurants look like they should be condemned!

See the Ishiuchi Maruyama ski resort overview page for more on our thoughts on the pros and cons, and also see the Japanese ski resorts ratings page to see how it compares.
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