I skied in Hakuba in January 2020 just before COVID hit. Easy and quick access from Tokyo which is a plus. I stayed at the excellent Umitoyama in Echoland which is owned by a friend of mine (he also owns Frontier Hakuba ski school in Norikura) and although a little out of town was a good base to explore the valley. Great onsen in the town centre. Most of the resorts are single entities and not joined by lifts which after skiing in other places in Japan and throughout the world I find a little perplexing. I found the transport in the valley to be confusing and intermittent but nonetheless widespread so you can get pretty much everywhere but it can some working out. The buildings and infrastructure in the valley are a little run down and doesn't look like much has been done since the winter olympics, although the town centre is quite nice.

Not a lot of snow when I was there but on my last day there was a 40cm snowfall. This is where the problems in this valley manifest themselves. The Echoland bus terminal was packed with foriegners trying to get on the early bus to Tsugiake at the other end of the valley where everyone heads for powder. It was full so we were resigned to waiting for the second morning bus 2 hours later. Credit to the bus company as they arranged a second bus and 20 mins later we were on our way. Arriving at Tsugaike the line to buy tickets extended from the ticket office all the way down to the bus stop, some 200 metres. It took nearly an hour to buy a lift ticket before I could be on my way for a day of backcountry. There are only 2 buses in the afternoon to get back to Echoland. I got there in time for the last bus but there were so many people waiting and there was pushing and shoving to get on. Nearly got into a fight with an American guy.

As predominately a backcountry telemark skier I try to avoid busy resorts preferring places like Central Hokkaido where there are far less people. Also the 40cm of powder that day was quite heavy - no comparison to the light and dry Hokkaido powder. I may be returning to Hakuba to visit my friend but it won't be as a preferred ski destination in Japan.
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Unfortunately, since my previous visit, Wandano Village area has been taken over by Australians. The developer has bought up old Japanese properties and has built apartments and converted Japanese venues into pizza and burger bars: good if you are an Aussie with kids but not a Japanese experience. It's a complete take-over of that area so people need to be aware that if you want Thredbo in Japan, fine but if not you need to book into other areas of Hakuba.
The terrain is more suited to piste busters than going off-piste unless you want to seriously dodge the patrollers and risk the consequences. It hosts a round of the Freestyle World Tour so the out-of-bounds has some serious options but...
Very busy with Japanese on the weekend, and they love to go really fast on-piste!
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Unfortunately, since my previous visit, Wandano Village area has been taken over by Australians. The developer has bought up old Japanese properties and has built apartments and converted Japanese venues into pizza and burger bars: good if you are an Aussie with kids but not a Japanese experience. It's a complete take-over of that area so people need to be aware that if you want Thredbo in Japan, fine but if not you need to book into other areas of Hakuba.
The terrain is more suited to piste busters than going off-piste unless you want to seriously dodge the patrollers and risk the consequences. It hosts a round of the Freestyle World Tour so the out-of-bounds has some serious options but...
Very busy with Japanese on the weekend, and they love to go really fast on-piste!
See our video here

It’s difficult to sum up Hakuba because it has many parts to it and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. If you only want to speak English and hang out with other westerners and have a chicken parma in an Aussie pub, you can do that. Or if you want more old-school Hakuba villages and lodging that are mostly frequented by Japanese skiers and snowboarders and enjoy a little Japanese culture, that’s possible too.

Since our last visit, not too much has changed. Several new lodges and bars run by westerners have opened up, but the ski resorts seem pretty much the same. Many of the lifts are still archaic and all those yen from masses of visitation in the 2010s didn’t seem adequate to pay for lift or terrain development. And since Covid, the number of operational lifts and groomed runs has shrunk. We’re not sure if that’s due to maintenance issues that they can’t afford to pay for or problems with staffing levels. One major exception was Hakuba Norikura that has bucked the trend, and a brand new lift has transformed the ski resort for avi savvy expert skiers and riders (see our Norikura review).

We stayed at the Tsugaike base which has stark contrasts between decaying Olympic-era buildings against a handful of renovated lodges, new eateries, a brewery and a westernised bar. This village still has plenty of Japanese culture and a stay at the Matsunoki-tei is a great choice for an inexpensive Japanese experience.

Not too far from Tsugaike is the Sierra Resort where one afternoon we enjoyed a long soak in the upscale onsen.

We also stayed in Happo Village which has a nice vibrance, although it was hard to get a meal that wasn’t pizza or burgers. Happo was mostly very westernised but we stayed at Resort Inn Seikan, which was inexpensive and old-school Japanese, and it was a breath of fresh air that we had to communicate with the host in broken English/Japanese and google translate. We also really enjoyed a visit to the Mimizuku Onsen in Happo.

You can see our reviews of the ski resorts of Happo One, Goryu, Tsugaike, Norikura and Cortina.

You can also see our Japanese ski resort ratings to see how the Hakuba ski areas compare, but keep in mind that Hakuba collectively would score much higher than the individual resorts.
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Super archaic lifts. Super slow.

Snow was crap when we were there early January.

Overpriced everything.

Stupid shuttle system where people bring their skis and boards on the bus?? Wtf?

Weak terrain.
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The Hakuba Vally offers a lot of different riding. Hakuba One is the most crowded resort in the area based on my experience. In many of the resorts ski patrol will pull your lift ticket if you ski out of bounds. If you want good off piste riding and fresh lines go up to Corintina. It is a smaller resort but great tree runs, maybe the best tree runs in Honshu. Beginners shold try Tsugaiki Kogan. There is a huge open hill at the bottom for beginners to practice on. Tsugaikai also offer Heli skiing later in the Season and a rope way that goes far up the mountain. Both the Heli skiing and the rope way are not patrolled so ride at your own risk. I recommend the rope way ove the helicopter based on shear economics. The heli ride runs around 20,000 yen per person and the rope way was 750 per person.
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Every ski area and village in Hakuba is rather different, so it’s somewhat difficult to make some generalisations about Hakuba. Firstly it was rather busy in most parts. Admittedly we did visit at a peak time but it couldn’t be helped. The queues to get a lift ticket or exchange a HV pass were ridiculously long at a few of the ski areas. The ski areas themselves were reasonably busy, but it’s all relative because they were quiet compared to some Colorado ski resorts but hectic compared to some of the lesser known Japanese ski resorts. Since we last visited, some of the ski areas have opened up designated tree zones. It snowed a lot during our trip, but the in-bounds trees tracked out very quickly at a few of the areas (but not all). It really emphasised that having a guide is useful and that the backcountry is the main strength of Hakuba, and if you want fresh powder and don’t want to earn your turns, go to Tohoku.

The central Hakuba villages have become a little more westernised and more expensive since our last visit. Some of the drinks prices in Echoland were ludicrous and a trendy café at the base of Happo One was charging 900 yen for about 10 corn chips and a mouthful of guacamole. Many more staff spoke English and international ski schools have spread across more of the ski resorts. Echoland was a case of “spot the Japanese”, with the bogan on a budget much more prevalent.

Conversely in the more peripheral Hakuba ski resorts, the “real Japan” was more evident. Food and drink were still cheap, and at a hotel in Goryu the staff didn’t speak one word of English, and at a Norikura hotel only a tiny percentage of staff spoke English, which was a little refreshing. At Kashimayari we saw no gaijin.

Considering each of the Hakuba ski resorts and village differ so much, you can see our reviews from this trip for the individual areas:
Hakuba 47
Goryu
Norikura
Cortina
Tsugaike
Kashimayari
Iwatake

You can see our Japanese ski resort ratings to see how the Hakuba ski areas compare, but keep in mind that Hakuba collectively would score much higher than the individual resorts.
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Stayed at Brownie Condos Echoland - handy spot helpful managers. Fortunately had 100cm plus of new snow during the week. Skied and boarded Goryu, 47, Happo, Tsugaike, Iwatake and Cortina, on and off piste, trees and parks. In a nutshell a skiers and boarders top shelf smorgasbord. We will return!
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I spent the 2016-17 season from late November to mid March working as a lifty in Tsugaike Kogen. Although Tsugaike isn't as steep as other resorts such as Happo & Goryu/47, the deep powder definitely makes up for it. Some days the snow was 50-60cm deep after just one night! Light and dry white gold!!!

If you're in Hakuba i would definitely recommend hopping on a daily shuttle bus over to Tsugaike during Jan-Feb and hitting the powder that no one seems to rate there..

I also snowboarded at Happo, Iwatake and Cortina. They were amazing. Small park at Iwatake was unreal, had it to myself for an hour one morning..

Crowds seem to be non-existant in Hakuba due to there being 11 resorts to choose from around the valley (expect Japanese national holidays and the busy Christmas - New Years period).

I'll be back Hakuba!
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We were there end of January for two weeks and stayed in the charming (more upmarket) Wadono area two minutes walking distance to the Happo One Lifts and the free shuttle bus to the other resorts. We were amazed at how empty the resorts were despite it being peak season (having spent hours in previous seasons in other places in Japan queuing up for the lifts). Powder was amazing and we loved being able to ski different resorts depending on day/weather. We went to Happo One, Goryu and Hakuba 47. Being a big group was awesome. There was something for everyone. Well organised, friendly and flexible ski schools (Hakuba Ski School has great English speaking ski instructors from all over the world who have taught at Hakuba at many seasons- none of the kids/beginners were stuck with an instructor who was there for the first time as we have had in other parts of Japan, so they were really familiar with the mountain). Double black diamond runs and moguls are easy to find. We particularly liked that many of the easy runs crossed or met up with harder runs, so it was possible for an intermediate and expert skier to "ski together" and meet at certain points or at the bottom. It was also great that you quite often had an option to do a green/red run from the very top all the way down or choose the black runs down. It means that the beginners in our group weren't constantly on a lift and got to ski from the top to the bottom of the mountain. The lifts at the bottom of some of the more challenging black runs were great too - you could just do black runs over and over again.
The Hakuba 47 ski park with half pipes and jumps were fun and the tree runs throughout meant that you could easily ski in fresh powder every day.
Food was cheap, plentiful and reasonable. We have two favourite ramen noodle places, found countless charming ishikawa restaurants and chanced upon some awesome food trucks at the bottom of the Sakka lifts- Samurai terriyaki chicken sandwiches, tacos, thai food, homemade spicy plum sake and Little Alaskan Burgers.
The disco bus taking us to Momonoki Hotel minutes away for an absolutely amazing indoor/outdoor onsen and western/japanese buffet for everyone to enjoy was a hit!
We also enjoyed day trips to see the snow monkeys (seeing them fed and soaking in the onsen was brilliant), all you can eat strawberry picking and a really fun evening learning about Japanese drums, rice cake making at the Goryu centre.
Everyone was really friendly and lovely from the ski lift operators, ski rental, locals, bus drivers, ski school and restaurant staff. Best ski holiday every.
Hakuba-we are in love and will definitely be back!
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