The forest
What grows on Hoshino Resorts Tomamu
Both kinds, in patches. Some stands drop their leaves and open up for the winter; others are evergreen conifer and stay closed.
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 1 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,160–1,236 m | | 1% |
| 1,085–1,161 m | | 55% |
| 1,009–1,085 m | | 90% |
| 934–1,010 m | | 82% |
| 858–934 m | | 48% |
| 783–859 m | | 45% |
| 707–783 m | | 48% |
| 631–707 m | | 42% |
| 556–632 m | | 40% |
| 480–556 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Platinum Bell 827 m | 55% | |
| Dragon Ridge 1,003 m | 51% | |
| No Gravity 594 m | 50% | |
| Silver Bell 5,930 m | 46% | |
| North Star 436 m | 42% | |
| Short Story 193 m | 42% | |
| Panorama Ridge 824 m | 41% | |
| Silky Way 523 m | 40% |
The other 21 runs
| Run | The band either side | See-through |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner's Choice 990 m | 35% | |
| Aspen Bahn 381 m | 34% | |
| Road to Gondola 620 m | 34% | |
| Knaster 658 m | 32% | |
| Natural Terrain 514 m | 31% | |
| Highway Coaster 1,415 m | 28% | |
| Twisting Forest 1,269 m | 27% | |
| Forest Maze 497 m | 25% | |
| The Glory 621 m | 24% | |
| Moonshine 327 m | 19% | |
| Exhibition 1,389 m | 18% | |
| Venus 645 m | 17% | |
| Gemini 378 m | 16% | |
| Sunshine 1,587 m | 10% | |
| Freeway 418 m | 10% | |
| Grand Prix Z 472 m | 6% | |
| Hello Nipo 652 m | 2% | |
| Fairy Woods 781 m | 0% | |
| Bird Watcher 313 m | 0% | |
| Hotalu Street 252 m | 0% | |
| Pine Road 245 m | 0% |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Plantation and farmland 植林地・耕作地植生 | 38% | |
| Beech-zone regrowth ブナクラス域代償植生 | 32% | |
| Natural subalpine conifer forest コケモモ－トウヒクラス域自然植生 | 16% | |
| Natural beech-zone forest ブナクラス域自然植生 | 7% | |
| Subalpine conifer-zone regrowth コケモモ－トウヒクラス域代償植生 | 4% | |
| Other その他 | 2% | |
| Alpine natural vegetation 高山帯自然植生域 | 1% |
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.
- トドマツ植林 30%
- シラカンバ－ミズナラ群落 19%
- ダケカンバ－エゾマツ群落 6%
- ササ－ダケカンバ群落（北海道） 6%
- ササ－シラカンバ群落 5%
- ササ群落（II） 4%
The other 28 communities
- トドマツ－ミズナラ群落 3%
- ススキ群団（V） 3%
- ダケカンバ群落（III） 3%
- ダケカンバ群落（V） 2%
- カラマツ植林 2%
- ゴルフ場・芝地 2%
- ハルニレ群落 1%
- アカエゾマツ植林 1%
- ササ群落（III） 1%
- 外国産樹種植林 1%
- ササ群落（V） 1%
- 緑の多い住宅地 1%
- エゾマツ植林 1%
- 市街地 1%
- オオアワダチソウ群落 1%
- ダケカンバ群落（Ⅳ） 1%
- ハイマツ群落 1%
- ヤマハンノキ群落 1%
- エゾマツ－トドマツ群集 0%
- エゾイタヤ－ミズナラ群落 0%
- ササ群落（IV） 0%
- オオヨモギ群落 0%
- 伐採跡地群落（V） 0%
- ヤナギ低木群落（IV） 0%
- 開放水域 0%
- ヤナギ高木群落（IV） 0%
- オオヨモギ－オオイタドリ群団 0%
- 放棄畑雑草群落 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 | 4% |
| 9 | Natural forest | 20% |
| 8 | Regrowth close to natural forest | 3% |
| 7 | Secondary forest | 27% |
| 6 | Plantation | 35% |
| 5 | Tall secondary grassland | 5% |
| 4 | Short secondary grassland | 3% |
| 3 | Orchard, tea and mulberry field | 1% |
| 2 | Farmland and green residential land | 2% |
| 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: 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.