I just returned from my second trip to Sahoro. I left a review pre-Covid, and was longing for a new week of fresh pow in what I remembered as being a very fun place. Unfortunately we got really unlucky with the snow conditions this time. Nothing you can do about that...
But the only reason why I want to give a negative review here is that the Sahoro Express was kept closed during the full 8 days of our stay. Some say it opens on weekend, but it didn't for us.
The Sahoro Express is the chairlift that serves the north faces of the resort, so basically the one chairlift any good skier will be sticking to. From that chairlift you get into the trees and steeper slopes. Imagine our disappointment are seeing it closed.
The Club Med manager told me he reckons it's due to a lack of staff in the resort, post-Covid. Not sure if that's true, because the resort owners don't communicate openly about it.
Suffice to say that unless you're a beginner, there is no point in going to Sahoro if this huge portion of the resort remains closed. If you're a beginner/intermediate, then Sahoro is the place for you. Stay with your family at Club Med, you will enjoy it for sure!
But if you're an expert, and was hoping for sweet fresh lines, avoid it until they resume the Sahoro Express operation (very unclear whether it will resume any time soon. The sahoro express is masked with white tape on the resort maps down the base --- tells me it's pretty permanent)
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There is no doubting that sahoro is a "small resort", there are no refreshments or toilet facilities anywhere but at the bottom of the one gondola, the "park" is only there for half the season and is very small, we have only two hotels and it's common to ski from top to bottom only seeing a few people. But there in lies the beauty of the resort. For beginners its perfect, club med has its own begineers area, then each slope progresses smoothly with plenty of accessible terrain. Intermediates aswell can easily find challenges, and with varying snow conditions a slope that may have seemed to easy one day can quickly be more challenging the next. For the advanced skiier I can understand why some may say you can get bored here. There are only a few groomed black runs open. However there it is true only boring people get bored. There are plentiful inbound tree runs, the option to hike to the summit and stay in the cabin before traversing over to wide back country tracks, sahoro express offers lifted access to ungroomed rooms more similar to accesible off pieste than anything else. Club Med offers "lessons" all the way up to fast paced tree skiing through narrow gaps and in deep powder, so you don't have to worry about getting lost at all. Having skiied in Argentina, Canada and all across Europe, this is by far my favourite resort. Come with an open mind, ready to explore, and you too will fall in love.
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When you go to Sahoro, you most automatically stay at the Club Med, which is just the perfect place for the whole family. It's pricey but totally worth it. The great thing is that the level of most clients there is not super high so if you're a hard core Pow-head you will not have too much competition.
What's also great is that all clients of the Club Med ski in their class, so kids have lots of fun during the day while you're trying to make your own lines in the trees.

That being said, although Sahoro is in Hokkaido, it doesn't get as dumped as Niseko or Rusutsu with crazy snowfalls. I stayed in Sahoro about 5 days at the end of Feb, and the conditions were not really good, with some very warm days. I was told it was not a great year (which I think is true) but Sahoro being more inland means it gets less snow in general. Still had fun discovery this new place.

I'm going back again in 2020. I am hoping snow will be better this time because with really good conditions, this place has the potential to be pretty epic! Will report back...
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Club Med Sahoro is the place to be.
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One of our main goals of returning to Sahoro was to check out the new terrain that was introduced for the 2016-17 season. We'd heard that the new Sahoro express quad is often closed for no apparent reason, so we were thankful to arrive and find the chair open (well on our first day anyhow!).

So what did we think of the new terrain? The snow quality was superb and the tree skiing was divine, although newbies to tree skiing might not love it as much, because it was tight-ish in places. And despite Club Med Sahoro being at full capacity, there were abundant freshies in the trees because Club Med (and the Sahoro Resort Hotel) tend to attract an on-piste crowd. We only saw one Club Med instructor with a small group of guests in the new zone, and they're not allowed to stray too far from the piste, so we could push wider and wider to get continuous freshies.

Very surprisingly, a couple of the piste in this zone don't seem to have been finished off. Well I hope they don't think they've finished them because some idiot cut the trees off too high, and there were stumps galore poking through (and some rocks) despite the snow base being excellent. It made tree skiing look like a risk free venture!

With the bizarre lift closures and the unfinished piste, Sahoro doesn't seem to be celebrating this amazing new lift and new terrain. The Sahoro English website doesn't even have a trail map on it that's reflective of the new area, nor do their stats reflect the new courses.

For our thoughts on the pros and cons of Sahoro Resort as a whole, see the Sahoro overview page as well as our Hokkaido ski resort ratings to see how it compares to other ski areas. Also check out our review of Club Med Sahoro.
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Club Med 2018.
Sahoro beckoned owing to the arrival of the new sahoro express chair lift in 2017 expanding the resorts terrain.
We spent a week at club med in January 2018.
The resort is uncrowded generally which is a major plus . Additionally the powder police are low key. No one blew a whistle at me once for the whole week which was nice.
Frustrations are the intermittent running of lift 8 which serves the higher ungroomed terrain on Skiers L and the seemingly permanent decommissioning of lift 4 which is the skiers R top lift.
Hence the need to go to the bottom of the mountain on every run to ride the gondola to the top again.
The new lift only ran on the weekend, possibly due to the poor cover this year but possibly also due to fiscal reasons. The new terrain it opens is superb.
Club Med was fun, especially if you have young children .
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Huge resort with lots to ski and see. Lots of fun for the kids with snow sculptures and fun little train parks. Amazing food with and service. Good crowd control. Excellent off piste and tree skiing for the adventurers!
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Our thoughts on the pros and cons of Sahoro are outlined on the overview page.

The Sahoro Resort was a bit of a surprise package for us. We’d largely anticipated that Sahoro was just a resort for the many beginners and terminal intermediates that frequent the Club Med. We were delightfully surprised that there was a good degree of tree skiing with some short yet steep pitches, and a major pro of Sahoro is that the majority of skiers and boarders are beginners or intermediates at best, so there’s generally very little competition for the fresh lines off-piste.

One limitation was that the top lift wasn’t running so we mainly rode the gondola (which got very ground hog day-ish). School kids turned up in droves and queues developed for the gondola. Thankfully they had a singles line.
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This ski resort is on the smaller side with only 8 or so lifts but it still offers a variety of terrain, mainly groomed piste. With out a doubt the best thing about Sahoro is lack of crowds, during the week you can almost ski the whole a run without anyone else around and lifts queues do not exist, even on the weekend. The quality of the powder is amazing and powder can still be found days after a big dumping of snow!!

It's mainly a resort that caters for skiers with no park to speak off but tree skiing is allowed.

With Club Med one of only 2 hotels based at the mountain it is a fantastic place for children as the Club Med set up caters extremely well for children.

Highly recommended but the only down side is the limited terrain options due to the small size of the resort. I would agree with previous reviews, this place is a hidden gem!
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Sahoro must be one of Hokkaido's best kept secrets, it's on the smaller side of the major hokkaido resorts but with the lack of people, or more specifically lack of powderhounds, or really anyone who might leave the trails it is an absolute powder gold mine.

The main attraction is the large bowl area the top half of the resort is set into, down the middle of the bowl is a wide powder basin (though on this visit it was roped off, nobody seemed to mind a discreet duck under or two, when open it may usually be groomed, which would be a real shame) then on the skiers right are well spaced trees, the sides of the bowl are steeper but still very well spaced tree area.

On this visit I am fairly sure it hadn't snowed for several days, however the snow was just sensational.
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