Okushiga Kogen Mountain

The mountain

焼額山 (Yakebitai-yama) 2,009 m

Landform

A volcano. Yakebitai-yama (2,009 m) is one of the volcanoes that make up Shiga Kogen, and its summit holds a small caldera with Chigo Pond and a high moor in it. Okushiga Kogen is on the mountain's northeast flank, and the top of the runs sits about 90 m from the summit, so the runs are on the volcano itself. Sitting on one flank is why the ski area falls broadly one way, to the east-northeast. The Shiga Kogen Yakebitai ski area is on the same mountain's southeast flank.

Rock

Most of the 526 m of lift-served vertical is the young volcano itself. From the top at about 2,000 m down to roughly 1,600 m, each sample along the runs is andesite and basaltic andesite lava and pyroclastic rock of the Late Pleistocene, the material the cone was built from. That is one continuous flank, which is why the whole ski area falls east-northeast. Below about 1,600 m the ground changes, and differently on each side. On the southeast runs, from about 1,600 m to 1,550 m, older andesite lava from the end of the Miocene into the Pliocene, several million years old, comes to the surface: the base the volcano was built on. Further down at the east base, from about 1,530 m to 1,480 m, it is non-marine sediment of the early Pleistocene. At the northern base the runs end on fan and talus deposits, loose material washed and shed off the mountain within the last tens of thousands of years.

From published sources, checked by hand · 2026-10-18

That ground is outside the ski area. It is not patrolled.