SR is an interesting place. The carpark was very busy when we arrived at 8.30am on a weekday and there seemed to be a lot of 'cool' boarders strutting around the base building with the latest gear on. This building again has an onsen on the top floor.

The resort itself isn't all that big, and frustratingly it seems like they only run D lift on the weekends. I’m not sure the decision behind not running D lift mid-week, when I visited it was more than busy enough to warrant running all the lifts and judging by the trail map that steeper left-hand side of the mountain looks delightful!

I headed up the slow pair lift (A) from the base building up to mid-mountain where all of the other lifts and runs funnel into. Kandustu is basically a big bowl that catches snow, it’s a very easy place to navigate and would be a fun little mountain for a mixed ability level group to ski as all runs basically funnel back into the same place. There was about 25-35cms of fresh across the resort from the previous night’s falls but I could tell it wasn’t going to last long here, lot’s of powder hunters!

I made my way up lift C and lapped this a few times, hitting the two blacks that feed back to C and the trees underneath the lift. Some nicely spaced powder turns for me to practice what I’m awful at, steep powder tree skiing! Ski patrol seems very lax here at KSR, a nice change! They also almost encourage powder skiing as they only groom the middle part of the red runs and left most of the blacks untouched, there is also minimal ropes blocking off obvious little pow hits.

I then made my way over to Lift E, which is another painfully slow pair lift, and hit the obvious powder spots off the two black runs that diverge left and right at the top. Snow was nice and dry but was getting smashed quickly by the hip snowboarders mentioned before. Adding to the ‘cool’ KSR vibe are some decent terrain parks spread across different sections of the mountain, including a really fun wavey like course with large rollers and lips that were epic fun to launch off with the fresh snow on top. Topping off the vibe were was the music being played on the lifts, something I’d now only realised seems to be absent at the Yuzawa – Gala – Ishiuchi group of resorts. At first this was kinda fun until it became clear there was 10 songs on repeat… how many times can you hear Whitney Houston belt ‘I Will Always Love You’ before going mad? I came pretty close! Was a poor choice to leave my headphones back at the accom.

I had skied all of the runs in a few hours (wishing D lift was running!) and the powder was tracked very quickly. I did a few more runs off the top lift and the clouds cleared a little, giving way to some nice views back into Yuzawa. After a few more runs and I honestly was tired of this resort. The morning powder was fun but gone fast, leaving a smallish hill with a few decent terrain parks.

Maybe it was my negative attitude creeping in at the thought of heading home early the next day, but I wasn’t overly impressed with KSR. Small and popular with the younger crowd, it’s very easy to add as a day trip if staying in Yuzawa, but given how busy it was on a mid-week day with a nice dump of powder I’m scared to think of what a weekend may be like – even if that top D lift was open. If you’re a park rat or a group looking for a resort to maybe do a warmup on at the start of your trip I would recommend KSR.
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Kandatsu is my go to when looking for day trip from Tokyo, you can be there in 1h15 (+10min free shuttle bus) from Tokyo station or Ueno.

It’s a very small ski resort with a few lifts but it’s quite polyvalent and benefit from the immense snowfalls of Japan so you will get great powder days.

Off Piste is tolerated (which is not always the case in Japan) as long as you don’t brag too much under the lifts in front of the staff.
You’ll find good spots under the lifts and also some forest runs.

If you like big and long slopes, this is not your place (I invite you to go to Shiga Kogen, Hakuba or Nozawa)

Great + : the Onsen/Sento in the 4th floor of the ticket center is great value too and perfect after ski before taking your train back to town

Bad points : a bit small, no nightlife (not in the city) and a bit flat (Japan…)
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It’s a little hard for a powder hound to differentiate the many dinky ski resorts in Yuzawa from the handful that are awesome. Kandatsu is one of the latter! It looks like a resort for beginners on the face of it, but it has some great challenging off-piste terrain; if only it was bigger (for powder hounds there’s probably not enough terrain for more than a one to two day visit)!

Kandatsu has very steep trees for experts, although the steep pitch doesn’t last too long before it becomes an “advanced” gradient. The tree spacing is also variable and ranges from technical skiing to being able to charge in the trees.

Another huge plus is that the tree skiing at Kandatsu is north facing, which is somewhat of a rarity amongst the Yuzawa ski resorts.

When we visited, we were the only ones playing in the trees so there was fresh powder on tap. Admittedly it was a crap season and there was some shrubbery poking through which may have put some people off from playing in the trees. All fool them!!

When we visited, the far lookers’ left quad chair wasn’t open which cut off some of the best tree skiing without going for a hike, although there was still plenty of great lift-accessed terrain available.

For more on our thoughts on the pros and cons, see the Kandatsu Kogen overview and see the Japan ski resorts ratings to see how it compares.
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