It was a really snowy day at Yudonosan, even though it wasn’t snowing just a little bit inland at Pole Pole Farm. Actually it wasn’t just snowy at Yudonoan. It was absolutely dumping with snow. It was a poor snow season generally in the area, and the locals were complaining that Yudonosan didn’t have much snow even though the snow base was sitting at 2.1 metres! Maybe this wasn’t enough snow to make a great half pipe and a few of the gullies weren’t filled in which impeded access to a couple of tree lines, but compared to places further to east, it seemed like there was lots of snow.

The day we visited it was a national holiday, so it was busy. There was a really long line to buy a ticket because there was only one person selling passes, and the lift lines were about 5 to 10 minutes. The locals are used to the ski area being deserted and being able to ski straight onto the lift, so they thought the place was packed, especially because latecomers had to park their car way down near the highway. It was sort of nice to see so many Japanese people out enjoying skiing and snowboarding.

We did a few runs on-piste where there was fresh powder, but it became a little dangerous with snowboarders flying up the banked walls with no regard for anyone else who might be on the run. We escaped to the off-piste where we had some fun exploring the powder amongst the trees. The lines were mostly mellow and rather short, but fun nonetheless.

We rated the “uncrowded” as a 4, because despite there being lots of people on-piste, there was barely anyone in the trees.

By lunch we’d had our fill of powder and headed off to Shizenkan for the afternoon.

You can see our Honshu ski resort ratings to see how we scored Yudonosan versus other ski areas.
See our video here