The forest
What grows on Hakuba Norikura Onsen Snow Resort
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 17 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,746–1,884 m | | 32% |
| 1,609–1,747 m | | 75% |
| 1,471–1,609 m | | 98% |
| 1,333–1,471 m | | 96% |
| 1,196–1,334 m | | 98% |
| 1,058–1,196 m | | 98% |
| 920–1,058 m | | 95% |
| 783–921 m | | 77% |
| 645–783 m | | 63% |
| 507–645 m | | 71% |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Satomi Ridge Course 988 m | 47% | |
| Highway Course 602 m | 47% | |
| Hakunori Family Course 732 m | 45% | |
| Expert Course 580 m | 40% | |
| Snake Course 309 m | 35% | |
| Wakaguri Central Course 1,103 m | 35% | |
| Sky View Slope 494 m | 33% | |
| Wakaguri Forest Course 806 m | 32% |
The other 4 runs
| Run | The band either side | See-through |
|---|---|---|
| Rabbit Course 770 m | 18% | |
| Kamoshika Course 655 m | 18% | |
| Satomi Central Course (SCL) 526 m | 1% | |
| Satomi Central Course (SCR) 549 m | 1% |
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 15 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 | 45% | |
| Natural beech-zone forest ブナクラス域自然植生 | 25% | |
| Plantation and farmland 植林地・耕作地植生 | 19% | |
| Other その他 | 7% | |
| Natural subalpine conifer forest コケモモ－トウヒクラス域自然植生 | 3% | |
| 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% | |
| Evergreen broadleaf-zone regrowth ヤブツバキクラス域代償植生 | 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 28%
- チシマザサ－ブナ群団 20%
- ススキ群団（V） 11%
- スギ・ヒノキ・サワラ植林 8%
- 水田雑草群落 7%
- 緑の多い住宅地 3%
The other 30 communities
- カラマツ植林 2%
- ヒメヤシャブシ－タニウツギ群落 2%
- チャボガヤ－ケヤキ群集 2%
- ブナ二次林 2%
- ケヤキ二次林 2%
- オオシラビソ群集 2%
- 自然裸地 2%
- ササ群落（V） 1%
- 残存・植栽樹群をもった公園、墓地等 1%
- コゴメヤナギ群集 1%
- 市街地 1%
- 放棄水田雑草群落 1%
- ササ－ダケカンバ群落 1%
- 畑雑草群落 1%
- 開放水域 1%
- アカミノイヌツゲ－クロベ群集 0%
- タニウツギ－ノリウツギ群落 0%
- 牧草地 0%
- ダケカンバ群集 0%
- ニセアカシア群落 0%
- ヤナギ高木群落（IV） 0%
- カラマツ群落 0%
- ナナカマド－ミネカエデ群落 0%
- ヨシクラス 0%
- ツルコケモモ－ミズゴケクラス 0%
- 伐採跡地群落（V） 0%
- 造成地 0%
- ヤマハンノキ群落 0%
- ヌマガヤオーダー 0%
- ユキグニミツバツツジ－アカマツ群集 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 | 29% |
| 8 | Regrowth close to natural forest | 2% |
| 7 | Secondary forest | 30% |
| 6 | Plantation | 10% |
| 5 | Tall secondary grassland | 13% |
| 4 | Short secondary grassland | 1% |
| 3 | Orchard, tea and mulberry field | 1% |
| 2 | Farmland and green residential land | 11% |
| 1 | Built-up and made ground | 1% |
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 15 m per cell — fine enough to describe a hillside, never an individual gap between two trees.