Tsugaike Mountain Resort Overview
栂池高原スキー場Tsugaike Mountain Resort (Tsugaike Kogen) sits at the northern end of the Hakuba Valley in Otari, Nagano, and is one of the valley's largest ski areas. It is known for its enormous, gentle beginner terrain, including the 1,200-metre-wide Tsuga-no-mori slope. Its 14 courses span 196 hectares and a 904-metre vertical drop, served by a gondola and 19 lifts, with a 4,630-metre top-to-bottom run, night skiing and a terrain park. Above the treeline is serious lift-accessed backcountry, the well-known Tsugaike DBD.
Resort Location
Location of the resort on the map of Japan.
Resort highlights
- Access
- Gondola access Terrain park
- Snow
- Reliable powder
- Terrain
- Big vertical High alpine Beginner-friendly
- Onsen
- Open-air onsen Family onsen Ryokan stays Onsen nearby
- Season
- Long season Late closer
Snow Report
Snow Report →Average peak depth and the month it arrives, over every recorded season.
Typical base at the deepest half-month.
MeasuredClear skies
The share of a typical winter that is clear here, and the months the clear days fall in.
They lean late: close to half of them arrive in March. Across the 34 resorts tracked here, a typical winter holds between 2 and 11 clear days.
Checked against sunshine measured at Hakuba. The same station validates Hakuba Cortina Snow Resort, Hakuba Goryu & Hakuba47, Hakuba Happo-One Snow Resort, Hakuba Iwatake Snow Field and Hakuba Norikura Onsen Snow Resort. This resort reads the same weather cell as Hakuba Goryu & Hakuba47 and Hakuba Happo-One Snow Resort.
How a winter day is classified
Winter runs from December 1 to March 31. A day counts as Clear when modelled cloud cover is 30% or less, Partly Cloudy from 31 to 79%, and Overcast from 80% up. A day with 5 cm or more of snowfall counts as Snow, whatever the cloud cover.
Cloud cover comes from the ERA5 reanalysis for the weather cell this resort sits in. It is checked against hours of sunshine measured at the nearest reporting station, lower down the valley.
The modelled cloud is compared with the station’s measured sunshine on the 3,243 winter days that have both. When the two agree poorly, the clear-day figure is given as a range instead of a single count.
The classification describes cloud over the resort’s weather cell, but nobody measures visibility on the hill. A cell that reads clear can still leave the upper mountain in cloud all day.
Mountain
Mountain →The spread from this mountain’s gentlest run to its steepest, ranked against the other mountains with pitch data.
Its runs range from 5.4° to 17.6°.
EstimatedLifts
Every active lift, ranked by the riders it carries uphill in an hour.
18 active lifts carrying skiers uphill.
EstimatedRiders per hour (estimated)
Lift Tickets
Lift Tickets →The cost of an hour on the hill, for every ticket length.
Cheapest cost per hour among the compared passes.
MeasuredGetting Here
Getting Here →One recommended public-transport route from each gateway city.
4 gateway cities with a confirmed public route.
Measured- Tokyo → Nagano Station (Shinkansen) + bus: board:Tokyo Station — Tokyo Station — (北陸新幹線, 80 min) — Nagano Station — (Alpico Kotsu, 92 min) — Tsugaike Kogen
- Shinkansen to Nagano + express bus (via Haneda Airport): Haneda Airport — (東京モノレール, 23 min) — Hamamatsucho Station — (山手線, 6 min) — Tokyo Station — (北陸新幹線, 80 min) — Nagano Station — (Alpico Kotsu, 92 min) — Tsugaike Kogen
- Airport shuttle taxi (via Matsumoto Airport): Matsumoto Airport — (Nan-an Taxi, 160 min) — Tsugaike Kogen
- Shinkansen + Oito Line + village bus (via Toyama Airport): Toyama Airport — (Toyama Chihou Railway, 24 min) — Toyama Station — (北陸新幹線, 26 min) — Itoigawa Station — (大糸線, 61 min) — Minami-Otari Station — (Otari Village Shuttle (Konayuki-go), 26 min) — Tsugaike Kogen
Videos
Videos →Riders’ own words from their videos, each with its timestamp.
6 rider clips from confirmed videos.
Creator-sourced-
“Come with me for a little preview to the Sugit Parks on the side here. We're going to hit a switchboard. We're going to 50/50 from three. And then we're going to cruise on down here... they do have a few rails blocked off here right now. You got a down bar, down bar, and a donkey dink right here. And this cruises into the big jumps.”
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“On the right side of the Sugaki base area sits OA nohara, a long gentle course stretching approximately 1 kilometer served by a threeperson chairlift running from the base up to roughly mid-mount. It is wide, it is mellow, and it tends to feel quieter and more tucked away.”
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“The station at the top of the mountain. Toganomori slope. After getting off the gondola, it is connected to the red (intermediate) course. Beyond that is the green (beginner) course.”
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“This is ski slope 10.11 slope 10 is for beginners. This is ski slope 9, slope 19 The width is about 400 meters. It is definitely the best ski resort for beginners in the Hakuba area.”
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“here we are at the top of sagaiki at the Suga number two peer lift … the key to this lift is it links you to all the back country and gives you access to the sagoki trees”
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“This one is great, take a look. Fortunately, not bad at all. We are reunited again. We're now taking the Han-no-ki lift. Now it's snowing under a big sun. Super cool.”