Hakuba's Ten Ski Areas, Side by Side: 1,071 m of Vertical at One End, 70% Beginner Runs at the Other

“Hakuba” is one word on a booking page and ten separate ski areas on the ground. They have different owners, different day tickets, different amounts of snow and — the part nobody lines up — very different mountains.

Each of the ten publishes its own terrain specification on the Hakuba Valley site. We measured snowfall at all ten over twelve winters using one method. Here are both, in one table.

The ten, north to south

Ski area	Typical winter	Courses	Longest run	Total piste	Vertical	Beginner runs
Hakuba Cortina	635 cm	16	3,500 m	13,335 m	530 m	40%
Hakuba Norikura	635 cm	14	2,500 m	8,919 m	798 m	30%
Tsugaike Kogen	668 cm	11	5,000 m	20,450 m	904 m	50%
Hakuba Iwatake	668 cm	13	3,300 m	18,220 m	539 m	30%
Hakuba Happo-One	414 cm	16	8,000 m	23,300 m	1,071 m	30%
Hakuba47	668 cm	8	6,400 m	13,570 m	794 m	30%
Hakuba Goryu	414 cm	15	5,000 m	12,620 m	926 m	35%
Hakuba Sanosaka	415 cm	10	2,600 m	6,100 m	460 m	40%
Kashimayari	449 cm	12	4,100 m	11,100 m	490 m	33%
Jiigatake	449 cm	7	1,500 m	4,800 m	260 m	70%

Terrain figures are each resort’s own, published on the Hakuba Valley site. Snowfall is ours, measured identically at every ski area on this site.

Four things the table says

Happo-One is a different size from everything else. 23.3 km of piste, 22 chairlifts and 1,071 m of vertical — more vertical than any other area in the valley and nearly double the median. If the trip is about covering ground, that is where the ground is. It also sits at the dry end of the valley: 414 cm against 668 cm at the top of it.

Tsugaike is the unusual one. Half its runs are graded beginner and it has 20.5 km of piste, 904 m of vertical and the highest snowfall band in the valley. Almost everywhere else, the gentle hills are the small ones. A 1,200 m-wide lower slope is what makes that combination possible.

Jiigatake is a first-day hill and nothing else. Seven runs, 1,500 m at the longest, 260 m of vertical, 70% beginner, zero advanced. The resort’s own description leads with a conveyor lift for children too small for a chairlift. It is 16 km down the valley from Happo, which is why it rarely appears in English at all.

Two pairs share a ticket. Cortina and Norikura sell one ¥6,500 day ticket between them; Goryu and Hakuba47 sell one ¥10,000 ticket and connect at the summit. The Cortina–Norikura pair is the strongest arithmetic in the valley: two ski areas, 30 courses, 22 km of piste and the second-highest snowfall band, for two-thirds of what Happo charges for one mountain. On our snow-per-yen measure Cortina is ¥10.20 per centimetre against Happo’s ¥23.70.

Choosing one

Never skied before. Jiigatake, then Tsugaike. Jiigatake has the gentlest profile in the valley and almost nothing on it that can go wrong; Tsugaike is where you go once you want a long run that is still easy.

Small children, and sliding matters more than skiing. Kashimayari. Its own description is built around the children’s area — a snow escalator so small children can get back up without a lift, and snow tubing. Jiigatake has the conveyor and a dedicated toddler slope.

You want to ski hard all day. Happo-One, for the vertical and the 8,000 m descent, or Goryu for 926 m and the valley’s largest night skiing operation, extended across the Toomi slope and part of Iimori.

You came for powder. Cortina or Norikura. Cortina is the snowiest end of the valley and keeps tree runs and ungroomed terrain; Norikura has a 38° pitch, a mogul course and off-piste. Tsugaike’s TSUGAPOW area is the third option and it is far bigger.

Someone in the group does not ski. Iwatake, and it is not close. It is the only one of the ten whose own description sells a reason to ride the gondola without skis: a cafe and terrace looking at the Northern Alps, and a snow park with snow sculptures, a kamakura and a swing. The others are ski areas.

You want the bath at the bottom of the run. Cortina. A 253-room hotel with bath facilities sits at the base of the slope, which in Hakuba is unusual — the valley’s famous hot springs are in the villages, not at the lifts.

What this does not tell you

• Neighbouring areas share a weather grid cell, and the cell boundaries do not follow the mountains. Cortina and Norikura both read 635 cm; Tsugaike, Iwatake and Hakuba47 all read 668 cm. Hakuba47 and Goryu are the same mountain from opposite sides and read 668 cm and 414 cm, which is the grid boundary falling between them rather than a real difference — treat those two as one figure somewhere in between. The north–south gap across the valley is much larger than the grid spacing and is real; differences inside a band, and between two linked areas, are not.
• Terrain percentages are each resort’s own grading. Nobody checks them against a common standard, and a 40% beginner figure at one area is not strictly the same thing as 40% at another.
• We have confirmed facilities only where the operator describes them. A ski area not listed above as having a kids park, night skiing or a bath may well have one — it means we have not verified it on that operator’s own page, not that it is absent.
• We hold a confirmed day ticket for four of the ten. Happo ¥9,800, Tsugaike ¥9,800, Goryu & Hakuba47 ¥10,000, Cortina & Norikura ¥6,500, all from each resort’s own site. The rest are on our lift ticket page as and when they publish. A Hakuba Valley pass opens all ten from ¥11,100 a day.

How this was measured

Terrain figures — courses, longest run, total piste length, vertical drop and the beginner/intermediate/advanced split — are taken from the Hakuba Valley operators’ own specification for each ski area, read on 2 October 2026. We have not adjusted them.

Snowfall is the December–March total at each ski area’s coordinates from ERA5 reanalysis via the Open-Meteo Historical Weather API, averaged over the twelve winters from 2014/15 to 2025/26 and measured identically at every ski area on this site. These are model figures and run below what resorts report, so they are useful for comparing one ski area with another rather than as absolute depths.

Lift prices are the standard adult one-day ticket published on each resort’s own site. We publish no forecast of our own; for conditions before you travel, check the Japan Meteorological Agency and the resort.