Karuizawa Prince Hotel Ski Resort Mountain
The landform the resort sits on: the shape of the hill beyond the pistes, how steep it gets, and where it stands among the mountains on JapowDB.
Broadly one hillside, leaning to the north-west.
Where this vertical sits among the mountains on JapowDB
215 m, more than 2 of the 49 mountains on JapowDB.
The mountain
矢ヶ崎山 (Yagasaki-yama) 1,184 m
- Landform
- A low hill of old volcanic rock on the southern edge of the Karuizawa plateau, one of the 1,000 m-class hills that ring the town on its east and south side. The national geological survey does not list Yagasaki-yama as a volcano of its own. Its rock is andesite lava and pyroclastic rock from the early Pleistocene, roughly 2.6 to 1.8 million years old, which is far older than Asama, the active volcano north-west of town, whose activity began about 130,000 years ago. The summit is 1,184 m, 151 m beyond the top of the runs and 27 m higher, and the ridge between them dips barely a metre. So the lifts run almost to the top of the hill itself.
- Rock
- Two layers, and the hill is almost all one of them. From the top of the runs at 1,157 m down to 950 m, the national survey returns the same rock at every sampled point: andesite and basaltic andesite, lava and pyroclastic rock, from the early Pleistocene. Only at the very foot, at 942 m, does it change, to recent marsh deposits, the wetland floor of the Karuizawa plateau. So the 214 m of lift-served vertical is one north-west face of old lava, ending where the hill meets the flat ground of the plateau.
From published sources, checked by hand · 2026-10-19
That ground is outside the ski area. It is not patrolled.
Measured
01
Which way it faces
Faces north-west.
Most of the mapped runs fall away toward the north-west.
02
How steep it gets
That steep ground sits high on the mountain.
The steepest quarter of the runs faces west, a different way from the mountain overall.
Its steepest pitch measures 33.4°.
Its steepest tenth is steeper than 16 of the 49 mountains here that carry pitch data.
16.6° the steepest tenth of runs
03
How varied it is
Its runs range from 5.4° to 19.5°.
Half of them are gentler than 9.7°. Each mark is one run.
That spread is wider than 19 of the 48 mountains here that carry pitch data.
04
What grows on it
Mostly deciduous: broadleaf woods and larch. They stand bare through the winter, so you can see a long way into them.
Read off the national vegetation survey (2024 edition), from fieldwork in 2021 and 2013.
The forest on this mountain, in detail