🇯🇵 Japan · Niigata

Kagura Area

かぐらエリア
10 / 100 Powder Score
No Snow 🌤️ Official site Lift tickets (official) Last season (2025/26) adult day ticket ¥7,500 Kagura 1-day (Kagura, Mitsumata and Tashiro) · this season's price not yet published (as of 16 Sept)

Kagura Area is a ski area in Niigata, Japan. The terrain spans roughly 971–1849 m above sea level. The mapped ski area covers about 5.4 km². Within 1.3 km of the centre, the map shows 8 marked runs and 3 lifts, totalling about 4.4 km of piste. There is no settled snow at the moment — the season has not started here yet. Over the last three winters the ERA5 reanalysis gives it 543 cm of snowfall a season, 58th (tied) of the 3,112 ski areas we measure worldwide. The model runs well below what resorts report, so the ranking is the meaningful part rather than the centimetre figure. The nearest city of any size is Nagano, about 56 km away. 3 official live cameras are linked below. 135 other ski areas lie within 120 km. Snow figures and the Powder Score are recalculated every day.

Base depth
0cm
Snow 24h
0cm
Snow 48h
0cm
Next 24h
0cm
Next 72h
0cm
Temperature
15.1℃
Max wind
7.5km/h
Elevation (est.)
971–1849m
Area
5.4km²

Elevation range is estimated by sampling points across the ski area.

Score breakdown

Fresh (48h) 0/40
Forecast (24h) 0/25
Snow quality 0/20
Wind 10/10
Base 0/5

Powder Score v1.0.0

7-day outlook

Date Snow Temp Wind
🌦️ 27 Sept 0 11.8 / 17.5 8.8
🌧️ 28 Sept 0 13.6 / 17 7.6
🌧️ 29 Sept 0 9.8 / 13.6 6.5
🌦️ 30 Sept 0 8 / 18.6 7.9
🌦️ 1 Oct 0 9 / 17.1 9
🌦️ 2 Oct 0 4.4 / 9.7 14.3
☁️ 3 Oct 0 3.3 / 10.4 11.5

Runs and lifts

Counted from the runs and lifts drawn on OpenStreetMap, within the boundary of the ski area. These are not the resort’s own published figures.

Marked runs
15
Run length
8.7km
Lifts
5
Vertical
515m
Top 1,838 m · base 1,322 m

Run map

EasyIntermediateAdvanced Lift
North is up. Runs are coloured by difficulty; black lines are lifts.
Run map

Drag to move around, and use + and − to zoom. On a phone, swipe to move and pinch to zoom in further.

The shape of the mountain

Longest run on the map1.2 km
Steepest pitch27°measured over at least 30 m
Average gradient of the runs11.8°

Which way the slopes face

North 37%
East 47%
South 12%
West 4%

84% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. Those slopes get the least sun, so the snow lasts longer.

By difficulty

Easy 4
Intermediate 6
Advanced 5

Lift types

  • Chairlift4
  • Gondola1

See past trail maps on Skimap.org ↗

Source: OpenSkiMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0). How finely ski areas are drawn varies by region, so treat the counts as indicative. Vertical is the difference between the highest and lowest points of the mapped runs and lifts.

Live Cameras

Road conditions decide whether you can get there at all. Check before you leave.

Footage remains the copyright of each operator. JAPANSNOWLINE neither stores nor redistributes it.

How much snow it gets

Measured by us across 3,112 ski areas by one identical method. These are not the resort’s own published figures.

Seasonal snowfall
543 cm
per season
Range over three winters
129 cm
480–609 cm. Steadier from winter to winter than most.
World rank
58
of 3,112 worldwide
Rank in country
41
of 395 in Japan
Elevation rank
62
Highest to lowest, of 395 in Japan. The centre point sits at 1,335 m, 582 m above the national median.
Quality rank
11
of 395 in Japan
Temp when snowing
-6.7°C
Japanese median: -3.5°C
Rain days
15%
Japanese median: 16%
Days over 5 cm
31%
Japanese median: 15%
Wind when snowing
17 km/h
Dryness 0.62
Frequency 0.89
Freedom from rain 0.61
Calm when snowing 0.98

The tick marks the median across the 395 Japanese ski areas. All four bars run the same way — longer is better.

The quality score deliberately excludes how much snow falls — it uses temperature, frequency, rain and wind. Snowing a lot and snowing well are different things.

Compared with what is nearby

Within 50 km straight line. Measured the same way, so the ranks compare directly. Ski areas a few kilometres apart share a weather grid cell and can return the same figure.

Ski areaDistanceSeasonal snowfallWorld rank
Tashiro Area2.6 km448 cm118
Mitsumata Area3.5 km593 cm43
Kagura6.6 km593 cm43
Kandatsu Kogen Ski Resort7.6 km610 cm31
NASPA Ski Garden8.6 km610 cm31

When it falls, and how winters differ

Month by month

Month by month, the most snow falls in January. March brings 53% of January’s snowfall. That is in line with the median for ski areas in Japan (51%). In amount, March brings 95 cm, more than the median of 45 cm.

153cm
Dec
179cm
Jan
128cm
Feb
95cm
Mar
Average snowfall by month, last 11 winters

Hot springs nearby, as analysed

3 hot spring sources with published analyses lie within 5 km of this ski area, nearest first (the hottest is 38.5 °C).

SourceDistanceTemperaturepHTypeAnalysed
貝掛貝掛3.2 km37℃ warm6.8 neutral——
猿倉猿倉の湯4 km38.5℃ warm———
三俣せきれいの湯5 km32.8℃ lukewarm8.9 alkalinealkaline simple—

These are analyses of hot spring sources, not a list of baths you can visit. They date from 1910 to 2005, many from decades ago, so today’s temperature and chemistry may differ. Names are as recorded in Japanese. Temperature and pH bands follow Japan’s standard for analysing hot springs.

Source: processed from the hot spring analysis data in the Geothermal Information Database (GRES-DB), Geological Survey of Japan, AIST

Worth seeing nearby

Places within 20 km of this ski area, for a day off the slopes or an evening. Chosen from those most read about on Wikipedia, favouring places with an English Wikipedia article, and listed nearest first.

PlaceTypeDistance
Mount Naeba苗場山Mountain4.9 km
Yuzawa Kōgen Ropeway湯沢高原ロープウェイNature9.4 km
Kiyotsu Gorge清津峡Nature10.7 km
Mikuni Pass三国峠 (群馬県・新潟県)Mountain14.2 km
Mount Tanigawa谷川岳Mountain17.8 km
Nozori Dam野反ダムLandmark19 km

Based on the Japanese Wikipedia lists of sights in each prefecture, as compiled in travel-log-data (CC BY-SA 4.0). English names from Wikidata (CC0). The content of this section is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Map

Where it sits relative to nearby resorts. For a piste map, see the official site.

Official piste map ↗

Places to stay nearby

18 properties on Rakuten Travel lie within 3 km of this ski area, listed cheapest first.

Press it and Rakuten Travel shows what is free on those dates across the properties listed here. Picking a property below does the same for that one property.

PropertyFromRatingDistanceGetting there
神楽ハウス¥3,5005.00 26 reviews4.7 km越後湯沢駅よりお車
Little Japan Echigo¥5,400—5 kmJR上越新幹線 越後湯沢駅よりお車にて約20分
ペンション レ・シャモア¥13,4004.78 77 reviews4.4 km越後湯沢駅よりバスで約20分・タクシー約10分/関越自動車道 湯沢ICより約10分
貝掛温泉¥21,8004.68 311 reviews3.2 km越後湯沢駅よりバスにて25分。関越自動車道の湯沢ICよりお車にて15分。
かぐら ホワイトホースイン—4.60 92 reviews4.3 km越後湯沢駅よりバスにて15分、 「かぐらみつまたスキー場前」下車100m
かぐらスキーイン(Kagura Ski Inn) ^——4.3 km越後湯沢駅から車で約11分
ペンションZION ザイオン〜理想の郷——4.4 km越後湯沢駅から車で15分
みつまたロッヂ—4.07 28 reviews4.4 km上越新幹線 越後湯沢駅より苗場方面直面バスにて約20分(みつまたスキー場前バス停下車、目の前です。)
ファミリーヒュッテ——4.4 km越後湯沢駅より車で15分
ロッヂ ふくだや—4.50 36 reviews4.7 km関越自動車道湯沢ICより10分。越後湯沢駅在来バス10分。越後湯沢駅より在来バス20分。
かぐらみつまたコテージ—4.29 28 reviews4.6 km越後湯沢駅よりバスにて15分、「みつまた中央」下車で徒歩1分。
ロッヂ エルブロンネ—4.50 36 reviews4.7 km上越線 越後湯沢駅 路線バス三俣中央下車 / 関越道湯沢ICよりR17を7km 約10分
Show the other 6
PropertyFromRatingDistanceGetting there
ロッジ やしろ—3.75 18 reviews4.8 km越後湯沢駅より車で15分 湯沢ICから約8km
K・Lodge—5.00 14 reviews4.7 km越後湯沢駅より、車で約15分
ロッジ チャーリーブラウン—1.00 11 reviews4.9 km◆越後湯沢駅より車で15分◆ 関越道を新潟方面湯沢ICみつまたスキー場方面へ 街道の湯 道の駅を過ぎたら左折突当り右折
Little Japan(リトルジャパン)——5 km浅草橋駅(JR中央・総武線、都営浅草線)から徒歩7分
KAGURA Garden Camp | COVE ^——4.7 km越後湯沢駅から車で12分
ロッヂモントゼー——5 km越後湯沢より車で約25分、関越自動車道湯沢ICより約20分

Contains advertising · Property data by Rakuten Travel (Supported by Rakuten Developers)

More places to look

Updated: 26 Sept 2026, 23:28

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