The forest
What grows on Kiroro Snow World
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 26 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,377–1,485 m | | 42% |
| 1,268–1,376 m | | 73% |
| 1,160–1,268 m | | 97% |
| 1,051–1,159 m | | 98% |
| 943–1,051 m | | 98% |
| 835–943 m | | 95% |
| 726–834 m | | 83% |
| 618–726 m | | 80% |
| 509–617 m | | 92% |
| 401–509 m | | 99% |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Asari Panorama 2,355 m | 88% | |
| Nagamine Course 2-A 1,064 m | 87% | |
| Asari Dynamic 1,816 m | 82% | |
| Asari Course 2-A 1,345 m | 81% | |
| Asari Course 2-C 976 m | 80% | |
| Asari Course 2-B 465 m | 79% | |
| Center A 1,054 m | 78% | |
| Yoichi Course 1-A 1,077 m | 77% |
The other 15 runs
| Run | The band either side | See-through |
|---|---|---|
| Expert A 1,028 m | 77% | |
| Expert B 281 m | 76% | |
| Center C 826 m | 76% | |
| Asari Course 1-B 774 m | 74% | |
| Center B 1,230 m | 71% | |
| Nagamine Course 1 1,794 m | 71% | |
| Nagamine Course 2-C 977 m | 71% | |
| Yoichi Course 2-A 529 m | 71% | |
| Asari Course 1-A 768 m | 66% | |
| Yoichi Course 1-B 1,850 m | 65% | |
| Nagamine Course 2-B 885 m | 62% | |
| Gateway Course 967 m | 61% | |
| Center Link 583 m | 61% | |
| Yoichi Course 2-B 403 m | 60% | |
| Family Course 259 m | 47% |
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 18 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Natural subalpine conifer forest コケモモ－トウヒクラス域自然植生 | 61% | |
| Beech-zone regrowth ブナクラス域代償植生 | 25% | |
| Natural beech-zone forest ブナクラス域自然植生 | 8% | |
| Subalpine conifer-zone regrowth コケモモ－トウヒクラス域代償植生 | 2% | |
| Plantation and farmland 植林地・耕作地植生 | 2% | |
| Other その他 | 1% | |
| Alpine natural vegetation 高山帯自然植生域 | 1% | |
| Riverside, wetland, salt marsh and dune 河辺・湿原・塩沼地・砂丘植生 | 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.
- ササ－ダケカンバ群落（北海道） 38%
- シラカンバ－ミズナラ群落 19%
- ササ群落（II） 12%
- ミヤマハンノキ群落（北海道） 8%
- トドマツ－ミズナラ群落 5%
- ダケカンバ群落（V） 3%
The other 27 communities
- ダケカンバ群落（III） 2%
- ススキ群団（V） 2%
- エゾイタヤ－ミズナラ群落 2%
- ダケカンバ－エゾマツ群落 1%
- シナノキンバイ－ミヤマキンポウゲ群団 1%
- 市街地 1%
- ダケカンバ群落（Ⅳ） 1%
- ハイマツ群落 1%
- カラマツ植林 1%
- ハルニレ群落 1%
- 畑雑草群落 0%
- トドマツ植林 0%
- ササ群落（V） 0%
- オオヨモギ－オオイタドリ群団 0%
- オオヨモギ群落 0%
- アカエゾマツ植林 0%
- コケモモ－ハイマツ群集 0%
- ササ群落（III） 0%
- ウダイカンバ群落 0%
- エゾメシダ－ウコンウツギ群団 0%
- ヒメヤシャブシ－タニウツギ群落 0%
- 岩壁植生 0%
- 開放水域 0%
- ササ－シラカンバ群落 0%
- ササ群落（IV） 0%
- 雪田草原 0%
- ハイマツ疎生群落（山火跡地） 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 | 14% |
| 9 | Natural forest | 56% |
| 8 | Regrowth close to natural forest | 2% |
| 7 | Secondary forest | 22% |
| 6 | Plantation | 1% |
| 5 | Tall secondary grassland | 3% |
| 4 | Short secondary grassland | 0% |
| 2 | Farmland and green residential land | 0% |
| 1 | Built-up and made ground | 1% |
A fraction of a percent 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 2021 and 2022: the edition is 2024, the looking is older.
About 18 m per cell — fine enough to describe a hillside, never an individual gap between two trees.