Hakuba Now: Thursday 18th December 2014
- Dec 18, 2014
- 4 min read
Independent snow and weather reporting from the Hakuba region of Nagano
New snowfall at base 30cm
Snowfall at base this season 169cm
Posted on Thursday 18th December 2014 This is an archived report. The latest Hakuba Now report can be found here.
After the frankly mad conditions yesterday with heavy snowfall and strong winds playing havoc, it's some more of the same this morning.
20+cm of lovely fresh light snow on the ground outside my place.
Most snow prize for the day goes to Cortina with them reporting 60cm of fresh on lower slopes and a whopping 80cm on upper slopes. Sadly it's not fully open today again due to the conditions and avalanche danger. When it gets to open though... oh yes.
Tsugaike Kogen are more coy with actual new snowfall numbers but their snow depth for the upper slopes seems to have increased by 80cm since yesterday and smashes through to over 3m. So I think there's a fair bit of new over there too. Tsugaike is also only limited open this morning with just the lower part of the Gondola moving.
Happo just seems to have the Gondola, Panorama and Kokusai 3 lifts moving early on. More of Goryu/47 is open. Anyway details as I have been able to find have been updated in the bits below.
Local services have been somewhat struggling to cope with the extreme conditions and transportation has been affected, though perhaps we are lucky that there aren't that many people around just yet. Once the storm clears I'm sure things will calm down and we'll all be able to relax more and just enjoy the snow.
When will things calm down? Probably by the end of today or early tomorrow morning. Sun and clearer skies is forecast for tomorrow which should make it a fanstastic day to be on the mountain. The increased visibility will of course help but do remember the inherent dangers that can come with all that fresh snow while enjoying it.
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Information from around the resorts - at the time of writing
Happo-one
Reporting 30+cm of fresh snow this morning.
Official Snow depths:
Base - 60cm
Usagidaira - 210cm
Open lifts:
-Panorama
-Kokusai 3
-Adam Gondola
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Hakuba 47
30cm at base, 60cm of fresh on the mountain this morning. The Gondola, Line C and Line E lifts on hold due to wind. Route 1 Upper, Route 2, 3 and 8 not open.
Official Snow depths:
Base - 130cm
Upper - 240cm
Open lifts:
-Line A.B
-Line D
Open courses:
-Line 1 Lower
-Line 4
-Line 5
-Line 6
-Line 7
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Hakuba Goryu
Reporting 30cm at base and 40cm on upper slopes this morning. Top Alps Daira lifts open this morning.
Official Snow depths:
Iimori - 145cm
Toomi - 170cm
Alps Daira - 220cm
Open lifts:
-Gondola
-Alps Daira Number 1 Pair
-Alps Daira Number 3 Pair
-Toomi Sky Four lift
-Mikly Four lift
-Cosmo Four lift
-Iimori Number 6 Pair lift
-Iimori Number 1 Pair lift
Open courses:
-All courses are generally open, just the Adventure Course apparently not open today.
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Tsugaike Kogen
Looks like just the lower part of the Gondola open early on this morning at Tsugaike.
Official Snow depths:
Maruyama - 120cm
Oya-no-hara - 140cm
Tsuga-no-mori - 305cm
Planned open lifts:
-Gondola (lower part only)
Open course areas::
-Shirakaba
-Oya-no-hara
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Hakuba Cortina
Cortina reporting 60-80cm of fresh snow this morning. Limited opening again due to the weather conditions and dangers.
Official Snow depths:
Base - 200cm
Upper - 270cm
Open lifts:
-Number 2 Quad
Open course areas:
-Ikenota
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Kashimayari
Reporting 20+cm of new snowfall.
Part open, fully open from this weekend.
Official Snow depth:
130cm
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Hakuba Norikura Onsen
Part open
Official Snow depth:
150cm
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Other planned opening dates:
Hakuba Iwatake Snow Field - Friday 19th December
Hakuba Sanosaka - Saturday 20th December
Hakuba Now 2014-2015 season |
Data as of Thursday 18th December 2014 Total snowfall at base so far 169cm Number of days snowfall observed at base 13 days Most snowfall observed in 1 day 40cm (14th December) November 2014 snowfall 0cm December 2014 snowfall 169cm reported on 13 days |
All snowfall data presented on this page is the snowfall measured and observed at base/town level by our reporter based in Hakuba. The 'new snowfall' number represents the amount of snow measured since the previous report. All opinions are those of the individual reporters. Information regarding ski area operations is manually checked every morning and is believed to be correct at the time of the report.