The forest
What grows on Hakuba Iwatake Snow Field
Mostly deciduous — broadleaf woods and larch. They stand bare through the winter, and you can see a long way into them.
Read off the national vegetation survey. Where the pistes are cut the survey records open ground, so the ski area draws itself.
Where that sits among the mountains we publish
Its forest goes bare more readily than 15 of the 29 mountains we publish.
01
Sight range, level by level
The mountain seen side-on. How far you can see into the trees changes with height, and each band is drawn level with its own row.
| Height | What you can see through | Bare |
|---|---|---|
| 1,489–1,584 m | | 94% |
| 1,394–1,489 m | | 92% |
| 1,299–1,394 m | | 92% |
| 1,204–1,299 m | | 88% |
| 1,109–1,204 m | | 85% |
| 1,014–1,109 m | | 87% |
| 919–1,014 m | | 91% |
| 824–919 m | | 85% |
| 729–824 m | | 76% |
| 634–729 m | | 79% |
Each reading is a share of that band's own forest, not of the mountain, and a band holding too little forest to state one is left blank. The pale bar behind the section is how much ground sits at that height, so a swing over a sliver of mountain does not read as a headline. No treeline is drawn — the survey describes stands, not a line.
02
What stands beside each run
A band 35 to 90 m either side of each run’s centre line: outside the groomed piste, inside what you look at from it. Ordered by how much of that band is forest you can see through in winter.
| Run | The band either side | See-through |
|---|---|---|
| White Ribbon 926 m | 88% | |
| View D 1,410 m | 87% | |
| North 769 m | 85% | |
| View A 771 m | 78% | |
| View C 1,328 m | 72% | |
| View B 700 m | 71% | |
| Kometsuga 230 m | 65% | |
| Hikage 627 m | 63% |
The other 8 runs
| Run | The band either side | See-through |
|---|---|---|
| East 351 m | 61% | |
| Sunny Valley 3,089 m | 58% | |
| DANGAN 865 m | 57% | |
| Kamoshika A 962 m | 53% | |
| Kamoshika C 690 m | 50% | |
| Kamoshika B 483 m | 45% | |
| Sonezawa 2,254 m | 40% | |
| Rai 450 m | 33% |
Each figure is a share of the surveyed ground in a band 35–90 m either side of that run — not of the run, and not of the mountain. The survey resolves about 17 m on the ground and the band is a few cells wide, so this says what the band is made of, never what one tree, one gap or one line of sight is like. A run the survey barely covers is left out rather than stated from a handful of cells. No treeline and no stem density: the survey records stands, not either of those.
03
What actually grows here
The survey sorts every polygon into one of its own vegetation zones before it gives a stand a name. Five or six zones describe a mountain; the named stands underneath them run to dozens.
| Vegetation zone | Share of classified ground | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Beech-zone regrowth ブナクラス域代償植生 | 48% | |
| Plantation and farmland 植林地・耕作地植生 | 25% | |
| Natural beech-zone forest ブナクラス域自然植生 | 12% | |
| Other その他 | 11% | |
| Evergreen broadleaf-zone regrowth ヤブツバキクラス域代償植生 | 2% | |
| Natural evergreen broadleaf forest ヤブツバキクラス域自然植生 | 1% | |
| Riverside, wetland, salt marsh and dune 河辺・湿原・塩沼地・砂丘植生 | 0% | |
| Natural subalpine conifer forest コケモモ－トウヒクラス域自然植生 | 0% |
The named stands underneath
The survey’s own community names, largest first. They are proper names for stand types and the survey publishes no English for them, so they stand in Japanese here rather than as a translation we invented.
- オオバクロモジ－ミズナラ群集 40%
- ススキ群団（V） 9%
- 水田雑草群落 8%
- カラマツ植林 8%
- チシマザサ－ブナ群団 8%
- スギ・ヒノキ・サワラ植林 7%
The other 25 communities
- 緑の多い住宅地 6%
- ユキグニミツバツツジ－アカマツ群集 2%
- 市街地 2%
- 自然裸地 2%
- ヤナギ高木群落（IV） 2%
- アカミノイヌツゲ－クロベ群集 1%
- チャボガヤ－ケヤキ群集 1%
- 畑雑草群落 1%
- コゴメヤナギ群集 1%
- 残存・植栽樹群をもった公園、墓地等 1%
- ヒメヤシャブシ－タニウツギ群落 0%
- 路傍・空地雑草群落 0%
- その他植林 0%
- アカマツ植林 0%
- 造成地 0%
- 放棄畑雑草群落 0%
- ヨシクラス 0%
- 放棄水田雑草群落 0%
- ジュウモンジシダ－サワグルミ群集 0%
- ニセアカシア群落 0%
- 工場地帯 0%
- 開放水域 0%
- ヤナギ低木群落（IV） 0%
- カラマツ群落 0%
- 伐採跡地群落（V） 0%
Every share is of the ground the survey classified on this mountain — not of the forest, and not of the ski area. The zones are the survey’s own; the English beside each one is our gloss and the Japanese is what the source says. Ordering is by area, and says nothing about what skis well.
04
How natural this vegetation is
The survey places every polygon on a ten-point scale of how little people changed it: 1 is made ground with almost nothing growing on it, 10 is natural grassland and alpine heath. It measures interference and nothing else — natural fir sits at 9 and is a wall you cannot see through, a larch plantation sits at 6 and is evenly spaced and lovely to ski.
| Level | Share of classified ground | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | Natural grassland and alpine heath | 0% |
| 9 | Natural forest | 13% |
| 7 | Secondary forest | 42% |
| 6 | Plantation | 15% |
| 5 | Tall secondary grassland | 9% |
| 4 | Short secondary grassland | 1% |
| 3 | Orchard, tea and mulberry field | 1% |
| 2 | Farmland and green residential land | 15% |
| 1 | Built-up and made ground | 2% |
2% of the classified ground carries a code that is not one of the ten levels. It is left out of the rows above rather than counted as a level.
Every share is of the ground the survey classified on this mountain. The scale records how little people interfered and nothing else: it is not a ranking, and a higher level is not a better place to ski. Levels this mountain does not carry are absent rather than drawn as zero.
National vegetation survey, 2024 edition — Biodiversity Center, Ministry of the Environment, Japan. Modified data, not produced by the Ministry.
This mountain's polygons were surveyed in 2017: the edition is 2024, the looking is older.
About 17 m per cell — fine enough to describe a hillside, never an individual gap between two trees.