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  • 11 months later...

According to TR Reid- Happo one 175ha, Nozawa Onsen 278ha, however See my recent post about size confusion. I'm not sure that this is correct because sources I have read about these resorts say that they are quite large however these sizes here are half the size of thredbo and 1/6 the size of Perisher, hardly seem big to me.

 

these 2 are on my hit list when I go over in a couple of months

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Size is all relative to me. What I look at when I see a mountain is the amount of vertical skiing. For example, when going to Happo I usually just ski one lift at a time and end up skiing around 1,000 feet or vertical at a time even though the mountain is somewhere close to 3,000 ft of vertical. Rarely do I go all the way to the top via the three lifts and then back all the way to the base of the gondola. I would say this is quite true for most ski areas. The middle quad at Arai is around 1,500 ft of vertical and that is pretty big for Japan. Lifts here are on the little of the short side. Back in NH back in the states where I ski it is a 2,100 ft vertical run. I guess if you compare that to the 4,000 ft at Jackson Hole and the huge vertical of Chamonix it is nothing. I like to ski long runs but for the most part I have not found that here in Japan. Anyone know where some of the longer runs are in Japan.

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I went to Happo once at the beginning of last season when it wasn't all open, and I had some epic whole mountain runs once I actually started ducking ropes. While Nozawa is probably bigger overall, Happo appears to have more steep connected by less flat. In both places, if you ride just the gondola and one lift, you can get some long runs in.

 

Although I'm not the sort of person to go measuring stuff in hectares... It all depends on what you define as 'skiing terrain' too. Most of the places I ride might not actually be counted anyway.

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Yeah, terrain, size and vertical is completely relative. I grew up skiing in Colorado, home to [now] over 2100 hectacre Vail. But I lived in Alta, Utah for a winter, and would gladly trade a tiny section of that mountain for all of Vail. If any one truly knows the Supreme Bowl of Alta, they know what I'm talking about.

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Ocean is right on about longer runs connected by less flats, but I think Nozawa has much more interesting and varying terrain.

 

Vail is HUGE but there isn't really all that much vertical. I haven't been to Alta, but I agree that Vail isn't really all that exciting. I don't mean to knock it really, but give me Blackcomb any day (1382 Hectares, 1609 Meters vert - 2386 Hectares including Whistler).

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