Woke up to 20cms of fresh at Yuzawa town level with promises of more up high, so was up early and at Gala by 8am which is just a 3 mins drive from Yuzawa downtown. Can also get the free shuttle from Yuzawa Kogen ropeway and/or the station. First impressions? Holy moly what an enormous complex! I’ve never entered a base building and seen so many people with proper suitcases and luggage lining up to buy tickets. The base building literally has a train station with train tracks inside of it, so cool. I was there on a Tuesday and the building was pumping, can’t imagine how mental this place gets on a weekend! This mammoth building also hosts restaurants, shops, rental places and an onsen on the 3rd level.

Pays to be early as taking the gondola up and it was a different world, fresh snow everywhere and only a handful of people, certainly pays be early on a powder day! Lapping lifts C, D and E is a good time for confident beginners and intermediates looking to improve. There was shin-deep powder on the sides of these runs which was fun while it lasted. Lift D is a nice fast fixed grip chair, whilst C goes to the highest place at Gala but only one trail down. Judging by the trail map you can drop off the side of C5 and head over the back into the Southern Area of Gala, but with no visibility and being solo I wasn't game to try.

Over at the Southern Area was by far my favourite part of Gala, all ungroomed runs serviced by the one chair. Runs S1, S3, S4 and S5 were all ungroomed with knee to waist deep yuki. Could still feel the piste underneath if I pressed down hard enough in my turns but overall it was a glorious two hours lapping the L lift and getting proper pow runs. There were about 20 people or so lapping the lift too and we were all waving and wohooing each other, was a fun vibe. This area is perfect for beginner powder skiers and those people like me who need to practice their soft snow technique. It helped that the Yuzawa Kogen link was closed meaning it was nice and quiet. I'd be coming straight to the Southern Area on powder mornings!

Overall I liked Gala more than Yuzawa Kogen, larger variety of runs and the lifts were quicker and able to spread out the crowds easier. It's not a huge resort and can easily be skied in a day, but when combined with the link to Ischiuchi resort which seems to operate every day (unlike the Yuzawa link) you have access to a decent sized resort to explore for multiple days. My experience was obviously positively influenced by the fresh snow all over the resort!
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The week before we arrived at Gala, they had nearly 6ft of snow so the runs were fabulous with super powder. We took our 12yr old son here who is an intermediate beginner so we were not looking for off piste or big snowboarding runs, more a family resort and we found it with Yuzawa.

A super easy ride on the bullet train and we were picked up at the station by the Onsen we were staying at in Ishiuchi. Gala is the resort that people from Tokyo travel to on the weekend and as we were staying mid week, there was literally no one on the slopes of Ishiuchi. Every morning we would set off on the skis and travel four chair lifts to get to the top and ski down on virgin snow to be the only ones waiting to get back up :) We loved it. You can easily traverse across the mountain skiing to the larger resort of Gala which was busier (but by no means frantic) There are three mountains and ski fields in the group and you can buy an inexpensive ski pass for all three. We would often start at Ichi, cross to Gala and ski back again at the end of the day. The runs were perfectly groomed with tight powder, some good more advanced runs but great family runs for the littlies as well making it an ideal family resort. People are very friendly. We stayed at an onsen (Maruyama Onsen Kojyokan) only frequented by Japanese (we are Australian) and at Ishiuchi, we did not encounter anyone who spoke English, we loved it. As they say "Google (translate) is your best friend! We had no problems working out drop off/pick up times (the hotel would shuttle us to the chairlift and pick us up again at times requested by us - they were fabulous and only too happy to help out) or purchasing ski passes, lunch or a cold Asahi. Our traditional Japanese boutique onsen was a fantastic experience for us, having to get dressed into traditional robes for dinner each night and coming back from a hard days skiing to soak in the hot springs baths - bliss.

Ichiuchi is an older resort and so the restaurants might look a little tired - the night life in this area is also fairly non existent - some great restaurants in the town of Yuzawa but I didn't see any clubs etc) (for us this was not a factor into providing us with a good holiday) It also has no off piste areas so it's not the go to destination for boarders looking for non groomed areas and nightlife.
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We can definitely see the merits of this resort that is fabulous for intermediates and has lots of bells and whistles and incredibly easy access from Tokyo. However it wasn’t our cup-of-tea considering that off-piste skiing comes with unacceptable potential consequences, so it’s not really possible. For such a modern ski resort, it’s surprising that they’re stuck back in the bubble era when it comes to their approach to tree skiing.

Gala Yuzawa is really a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. We visited on a weekday when we enjoyed cruising the groomed runs on the nice snow and took in the scenery. It was so quiet that one snowboarder was even taking a nap on one of the slopes!

We returned on a weekend and to say it was congested would be an understatement. The trails are mostly too narrow, and as competent skiers we found it rather terrifying going down the trails, unsure of which way the newbie snowboarders might veer. So the narrow busy trails must be super scary for beginners or perhaps they’re in ignorant bliss?!

See the Gala Yuzawa overview for more on the pros and cons and also see the Japan ski resorts ratings to see how it compares.
See our video here