Hakuba Iwatake - Report and discussion

[Tesselator 0]

First a little background on myself. I have worked at MANY ski resorts in the USA so I suppose I have a pretty good eye for both the runs and the resort operations in general. - K, that's enough about me.

 

 

Hakuba Iwatake is a very good resort. If you're into the girl chase it's perhaps the best in the Nagano area! That said it is not the very best in that area. Nagano is an area that is basically back to back ski resorts. In 23 min. I was able to ride to 7 different resorts, pull up in the parking area and get a good look at each of the resort bases.

 

When I say "ride" there is an interesting little side story behind it. We took a bus tour to "Hakuba Iwatake" but when we got there it was 6am. and there was nowhere to sit inside out of the cold. Also all of the slopes that we could see (viewable from the parking area) were barren of snow. I jokingly complained about being abandon in front of a fake ski resort and left for aliens to abduct. The bus driver was a surfer and a good enough fellow! His assistant knew everything about Nagano. So ultimately instead of leaving us standing outside in the cold we got back in the bus and were given a private tour of every ski resort in the area! It was a total blast! The older man who was the driver's assistant had many very funny and interesting stories to tell about each resort and his experiences skiing them or being naughty with the hotties of his day!

 

Of the resorts we toured that day in the bus (which was actually more like 150 minutes some of the more notable ones (in order of notability) were:

 

Tsugaike Cogen (Huge wide slopes!),

Coruchina (Most beautiful Itialian style Hotel/lodge), and

Hakuba Norikura (which had a very diverse selection of runs.)

 

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Everyone at Hakuba Iwatake were friendly and easy going. Not the usually friendly resort workers but these folks were especially friendly! I almost thought that they were all part of one big happy family! There were no resort derelicts working there like at so many other resorts in Japan. They were all either the older "kind & knowledgeable big brother" types or the young orange haired hot-dog snow boarder types! And all of them I noticed made it look real easy to make me (a 46 year old gaijin) and my 4 kids feel right at home - no small feat!

 

The hill itself was very good but lacked any extreme (aka advanced) runs. The snow was packed down as is every other resort with manicured (or "kept" "hardpack") runs in Japan. They ALL have to do this as a safety precaution against slides and etc. Powder parks are rare in Japan if they exist at all. Mostly that's the field of helicopter or snowmobile wild skiing and not of "parks" and "resorts".

 

The lower one third of the runs were closed due to lack of snow but that's to be expected for this time of year with the amount of customers that attend Hakuba Iwatake. Meaning there was NEVER any waiting in lines for the lifts and often you felt as if you almost had the run all to yourself. This, even though there was a prestigious competition held there that day.

 

So, the gondola brought everyone up to the half-way point and lifts were taken from there to any of 6 or 7 different runs - all ranging from beginner to intermediate with a few advanced-intermediate patches hear and there among them.

 

They maintained one very interesting run from the very top all the way to the bottom gondola loading area. This run while perhapps not intended to be a run at all constituted a little over 2 miles (or about 4 kilometers) of run and had some very interesting scenery along the way. It was well maintained the whole way down but was not labeled on the map as a specific run. More like a way to get to the bottom if you didn't want to take the gondola down. It was a pleasant surprise and I spent the last half of the day whooshing it! Some parts of it could almost pass for "advanced".

 

If there would have been just one steep mogul face and if the associated rental shop would have had some free-style skis available for rent this resort would have received a five-star rating when I rated it in the reports section of this site! It was however, a very nice experience over all!

 

-PS: I can defiantly recommend eating at the Crape shop at the bottom of the gondola area! Super yummy and reasonably priced! None of this matsuri BS where you pay sen yen (1000 yen) for just two bites of bananas that are too green with a tiny smidgen of chocolate syrup - These things were awesome!

 

 

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A note of caution to those who like woods tripping and off-run excursions: There is a sign board at the gondola unloading point that strictly cautions against this! It states in both English and Japanese that your lift pass will be revoked and you WILL be asked to leave the park if you're caught doing this.

 

The people were so friendly there though I kind of doubt that would actually happen if you weren't a jerk to them when you were caught. I didn't have the heart to test the theory myself. Besides, most of the off-run areas were too heavily wooded to ski.

 

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[big-will 7]

Thanks for the report T, good to hear about a resort that is less well known in such detail.

[BagOfCrisps 24]

Good report dude.

 

That crepe shop - oh yeah!

[JellyBelly 1]

Hey Tesselator. Cheers for that. Never been there and it doesn't seem to get as much talked about.

 

Would be really interested to know about the ski resorts you worked at in the US.

[Tesselator 0]

Thanks everyone.

 

Yeah, that's kinda why I decided to write it up. It's pretty good but not really one of the more popular ones - which makes it better imo - less people!

 

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Resorts I worked at:

Snow Summit,

http://www.snowsummit.com/index_winter.php

 

Gold Mine, (umm, now it's called Bear Mountain)

http://www.bearmountain.com/

 

Mammoth

http://www.mammothmountain.com/

 

June

http://www.junemountain.com/stats/

 

I took the GED and got out of High School, did this for 5 years while working as a framer (or something to do with construction - usually) during summer. I then moved to Utah and tried to get work at Snow Bird, Park City, and others but I wasn't a morman so they didn't want to hire me. That's when I went back to school (U of U) and got into Computer Science. Finished up at UCI and moved to Japan. Well, there's a lot left out in that but that's kinda it...

 

Working at those places I held the following positions:

 

• Cashier,
• Parking attendant,
• Snow blower,
• Lift Operator,
• Snow-Cat operator,
• Solomon certified binding & ski technician (Umm, a rental guy! )
• Ski Patrol.

Hehe, I got fired from 4 jobs my first season at Snow Summit. Lucky for me no one communicated with each other there. So the same day I got fired I had a new job in a different section. Had to get those daily free lift tickets man! I was 16 at the time with no experience but if asked I was 18 and knew everything about all operations of a ski resort.

[SirJibAlot 0]

hee huh hee....he said....snow blower....hee hee....

[cheeseman 1]

What is a snow blower, I'm trying to picture it.

[rach 1]

Snow making machines (?)

 

(Nice write up tesselator).

[Tesselator 0]

Yup, we were part of the "Snow Management" team. The system we used sent HIGH pressure hot steam through an underground pipe system. There were access points at various locations along each run. Sometimes you can see these access points under the chairs - there will be a hole (3 to 5 meter wide pit) in the snow and a pipe sticking up (or sometimes a tiny shed covering it). We hooked up hoses (that look like extra large fire hoses), attached various nozzles (depending on the temp, humidity, and area needed to cover) and then skied from hose to hose all night long changing the position and direction they pointed. They called us "snow blowers" because the steam comes out at really high pressures, makes a buttload of noise, and "blows" up into the air above the run - freezing and landing as "snow"!

[rach 1]

Very interesting Tesselator.

 

How do you rate Japanese resorts generally to where you have worked in America?

[Tesselator 0]

There's so very many things to consider! What were you wondering about specifically? There's:

1. Resort maintenance / attraction maintenance.
2. Run maintenance.
3. Show conditions.
4. Run Length.
5. Run diversity.
6. Season length (sweet months).
7. Local whether - for example June kinda sucked cuz they have this constant fog condition from the Lake.
8. General resort policies and enforcement.
9. Facilities and Facility location (accessibility).
10. Transportation services (shuttles and etc.).
11. Safety & Rescue (staff ability and quality of facility - if any).
12. Property Security (is your car or board likely to get ripped?).
13. Employee spirit (Kewl and friendly or control freaks that need a thumping?).
14. Price and availability (goods and services).
15. Then there's like, ummm, "Resort Presence" - the ability to communicate or make known, all of the above to customers.

 

What did I leave out?

[Tesselator 0]

BTW, I usually weight my experience on 2, 3, 4, 5, and 14 but I think everyone is different.

[rach 1]

I suppose I was thinking "generally" there Tesselator.

[rach 1]

I'd go with 2,3,4,5 as important myself.