Adatara Kogen
Another one bites the dust! Adatara Kogen is another of those small Japanese ski resorts that due to financial woes has fallen victim to shutting down a key lift. It’s a real shame that the Adatara Ropeway has closed, because the steep tree skiing off the top was the only real reason an international skier or snowboarder would want to visit. Adatara Kogen Ski Resort is now a complete waste of time for powder hounds, and there are much better
Aizu ski resorts to visit.
Pros and Cons of Adatara Kogen
Pros
- Adatara Kogen offers cheap lift tickets, especially on weekdays.
- The nearby Dake Onsen is a very acidic hot spring which is highly coveted.
Cons
- Adatara Kogen Ski Resort is very small and there’s much better piste skiing elsewhere in Honshu.
- Without the Adatara Ropeway, there is negligible terrain for powder hounds.
- It appears that Adatara Kogen doesn’t receive much snowfall relative to the other Aizu ski areas that are west of Mt Adatara.
- Adatara Kogen is located in the outer reaches of the Aizu region, so it takes a while to get there from the common Aizu accommodation zones.
Pro or Con Depending On Your Perspective
- The skier traffic is negligible so you won’t have to share any powder, but there’s probably a good reason that no one is there.
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Adatara Kogen Ski and Snowboard Terrain
Adatara Kogen only has 7 courses and 4 slow fixed grip chair lifts (1 quad, 3 double) and a paltry vertical of 210 metres (950-1,160m), whereas it used to go up to 1,350m when the gondola was operating, whilst Mt Adatara (nipple mountain) goes up to 1,700m.
The trail statistics are 30% beginner, 50% intermediate and 20% advanced, but as is somewhat common in Japan, there are some mixed ability trails which renders them only partially usable. Many of the beginner runs are partly intermediate so beginners can’t actually ride them easily and intermediates have to put up with a mellow slope to ride the intermediate slope. There are only 1.5 “expert” runs that are short and terminate in beginner runs, and rating them as “expert” is a gross exaggeration.
Adatara Kogen offers a tiny bit of mellow tree skiing off the lower lifts. Off the top of the gondola is some great terrain with short steep pitches of tree skiing either side, but of course unless you’re prepared to skin you can only look at it.
Adatara Kogen Snow
The average volume of snow per season at Adatara Kogen is unknown but it seems to be less than the ski resorts further west, because the large Mt Bandai and Mt Adatara create precipitation shadows. Adatara Kogen has some snowmaking guns to supplement the natural snowfall.
Where is Adatara Kogen?
The Adatara Kogen Ski Resort is located on the eastern flank of Mt Adatara in the
Aizu region in the north of the Fukushima Prefecture. The city of Nihonmatsu is nearby and the Dake Onsen area is just 5km away.
You’ll want to have a
rental car to get there because there are only a few shuttle buses that head to Adatara Kogen from either nearby Dake Onsen (which is hard to get to without a car) or from Koriyama train station. The telephone number for GPS navigation is 0243-24-2141.
Nearby Ski Resorts
Other ski areas in the region:
Adatara Kogen Accommodation
The ski resort has a basic hotel at the base area, and there are also several ryokan in Dake Onsen.
Dake Onsen Ryokan Listings
There are plenty of Aizu accommodation options near the main Aizu ski resorts.
Aizu Accommodation Listings
Facilities
There are many Japanese ski resorts that are somewhat small with simple lift infrastructure yet have grandiose base facilities with escalators and a huge cafeteria, however Adatara Kogen is not one of them. The buildings at the base are very simple and look rather rundown.