Mt. 3 pass Yuzawa (Gala, Yuzawa Kogen, Ishicuhi)

Mountain 3 Yuzawa Review

Who: Ippy the inutil. Reactionary leader of the spartan Navy attempting to curtail the surge in Athenian power.  

When: 405BC 

Where: Aegospotami, Turkey 

Warship Info: About 150 ships 

Accessibility: Defeat a small Athenian supply line in Aegina and Salamis to draw out the Athenians, then quickly move around their main navy and nip round to Hellespont where you can set up your base at Abydos before embarking upon a few raids threatening their grain supply and forcing their hand. 

Port Facilities: Access to Athens last real supply line from Abydos and the end of the Peloponnesian war is a bloody good reason to come here.  

Battle conditions: Calm seas, a nice safe harbor and a bunch of Athenians riding in and out every day just to see if you want to come and play before going home exhausted, tired and hungry. 

Anything Else?: Probably best to let them come. For real shanigans you might want to wait until the nighta when theres fewer Athenians around and head out into open seas. Youll be treated by a completely unpatrolled area where you can scuttle the entire fleet and lol at the noobs desperately trying to clip back in before they realise youve already destroyed their ride home.

No really, anything else? Oh all right. I came here on a Sunday, it was a one day recon mission. I made no attempt at all to take in every line, nor did I care about finding secret little stashes. I wanted to just enjoy having a wee ride and not spend my time criticising everything for a change. Basically, three mountains, a stack of connections, and just over 6 hours to do it before i had to get the bus back to echigo to pick up my 4.34 train home. This was never going to be extensive, or objective... or a serious review of the place i'm afraid.

Preamble: Getting here is cake. Pop on the shinkansen from tokyo, land at Gala Yuzawa or Echigo Yuzawa. If you land at Echigo Yuzawa just hop on a shuttle bus (or take a taxi- about 1000yen) to Gala Yuzawa. At Gala Yuzawa station theres a slew of facilities (from rentals to creperies) to get you grounded and ready to hit the slopes. Once you're all done pop up on the gondala and bish bosh! youre at the base station. It's about as easy as it gets. 

You can score individual passes for each of the resorts if you like, they do work out cheaper (by about 500-700 yen) of course and all offer a little something unique. Whether they all would be worth riding for a full day is a little questionable, but that's what this short (probably not short) review is about.

The three mountains are Gala Yuzawa, Ishiuchi Maruyama, and Yuzawa Kogen. 

[NB. If you do get off at Echigo-Yuzawa and want this ticket by the way, Yuzawa Kogen is about a 7 or 8 minute walk from the station.  Its a nice alternative to having to go to gala and then come all the way back on the terrifyingly slow (when youre about to miss your one direct train) shuttlebus].

The price is a perfectly reasonable 4900yen. I will preempt part of the review by categorically stating that you won't see it all in one day. I mean, you might get a reasonable outline, but unless you are literally only hopping lifts and nothing else, you will maybe ride about 60-70% tops. The ticket is therefore decent value. Its not three pokey little resorts that you'll be bored of by the afternoon. You'll instead be trying to decide what you want to leave out, or which runs you need to skip  just so you can say you've hit all three mountains up and got your moneys worth on it.

Big Mountain Yuzawa Review:

Section 1: Gala Yuzawa

Once you hop on the gondola (thats right! no ropeway! yay!) up to the main staging area you realise you're in a tourist hotspot. This IS NO BAD THING JAPAN! Sure its gawdy, and sure theres a fair few people, but it's modern, vibrant and full of energy. You have everything you need for a day trip, (from repairs to schools to shops and restaurants) all in easy reach. I don't mind this one bit. I know older heads might feel a little like their japan is being crapped on, but i WANT to see a bit more accommodation of tourists in Japan. 

When youre spending hours trying to figure out how to get to x resort using trains and bus timetables that are all in japanese, its a nice and very welcome change to see a resort which not only sets everything out in a superbly accessible way, but also signposts and announces in more than Japanese. Hearing both English and Chinese on the PA system really indicated that this resort was very international friendly. This resort wants to make it as easy as possible to get here, clip in and ride. It goes to great pains to do that and frankly a lot of resorts in Japan could learn a little something from this (though they really should switch the blaring racket of Helloween esque squeeling guitar crud assaulting my ears almost everywhere i went... oh to have remembered my damn ipod!)

So the first piece of advice is this: DONT TREAT IT SERIOUSLY. This is a loud, frenetic, tourist trap. It has everything set up PRECISELY for people popping here for a quick stay. It's the McDonalds of Japanese ski-jos. You cant look at it with the same eyes you might look at something thats genuinely nutritious. Its a nice break from the wholesome stuff though every now and again.

...And that's how i felt clipping in and getting on the first chair. It was kinda relieving to know I was just going to ride this place and not give too much of a crap about how good it is.

And this is where you get hit with your first neat surprise.

The terrain is actually... ... pretty decent!? 

The groomers are IMMACULATE, but once you get to the top you're met with a nice little zippy red run. After a few weeks of Kagura I'd almost forgotten what a nice fast red run felt like. Sure it wasn't massively long, but it was a fun gradient to just crack out some of those first turns and warm the legs up. A bit of speed and the blaring racket of the PA system was a long forgotten memory. Gala kicked off with a really good first impression.

I took a few more laps up there and then popped down the mountain on skiers left (into a nice cute green run with ungroomed side areas) and grabbed my breakfast. Sorry blue steel or whatever your name is, but your food is awful. Avoid it. 

After id choked down the hotdog and coffee and tried not to bring it back up, i popped back up to the top to find they'd opened the south side. 

This area was genuinely superb. The powder was light, fluffy, cut to crap, but it didnt matter. I didnt see one glum face here. Everyone was smiling and having a great time and seemed in sheer disbelief that this even exists in a McSki-jo.

The nice thing is the area doesnt seem to get packed. Not many people venture over this side making it not only the most fun part of the mountain, but also one of the quietest. It makes a great little getaway if you do find the bedlam of the main staging area to be a bit much. Its also top quality fun. The lines arent massive (they never seem to be in Yuzawa to be honest), but the powder was deep, plentiful, and great to just roll around in. 

The south area really offers a great contrast to the main Gala zone, making the resort itself a little more interesting than you might have initially thought. This isn't just the stuff of cynical tourism here. After riding this a few times it became very apparent that JR were incredibly shrewd in their purchasing of this place. It's not just the kind of place you ride because it's accessible. It's actually got terrain... and pretty damn decent terrain at that. Its also got snow. Of course, nothing ever feels epic, but it does feel much better than you likely think it will be. Its good quality stuff that you could happily spend a full day here no bother. I'm strongly of the opinion that even were there no shinkansen link and a bunch of day tripper stuff here making everyone comfortable, people would still come here because its actually a good and diverse little mountain. 

Odd that im summarizing Gala when ive literally rode 60% of it... well alas that's about all i had the time to ride. I didn't really get to the north area or take a few of the lines down. Instead at this point i figured since i was right next to the connection to Yuzawa Kogen i might as well nip across and see whats up.

Lucky for me the ropeway was just boarding as I made that decision (xx.00; xx.20; and xx.40) so off I went. 

Section 2: Yuzawa Kogen:

What a VIEW! You pop out of the ropeway and are immediately hit with mountains as far as the eye can see. Alas my stupid gopro has no real means to draw this out, but its genuinely beautiful to look at. The second thing you might see is a more traditional japanese way of doing things. It felt a little more sedate over in Yuzawa Kogen. The MT,3 pass was suddenly coming into its own. The crowds weren't here, the lifties weren't cracking their best disneyland forced smiles. It was more... normal. 

I hopped on the little kiddies lift which took me half way up and then got the chair to the top. You can then either run a black powdery run to the middle (and a red steep to the (sort of) bottom) or a long green path that winds around the side of the resort (and probably has some very beautiful areas - i never rode it), into a nice green bunny run back to the ropeway. 

There is a third line that i was ITCHING to ride, but ski patrol evidently spied me clipping in suspiciously close to the rope and stood there until i left. (its basically a drop off skiers right from the black run down into a few trees before plopping out on the aforementioned path). 

The runs themselves were alright. Bit short, but they did leave some of the tracks ungroomed which was nice. They werent hugely long, but the lifts were zippy as hell, so no bother.

The resort is kind of pronged however. The area i was in really only leads to the middle of the mountain. There is however a single long red run that brings you down to the base of the yuzawa ropeway (near echigo yuzawa station), and it was the entire reason i was stoked to be there.

Unfortunately i rode it and realised it was too zig zaggy to let rip so it was a bit of a waste of time and energy if i'm honest. 

At the very foot of Yuzawa Kogen are a few little bunny slopes that bring you to the ropeway staging area where i realised i had a 15 minute wait for the next bus up. Blast. 

So i waited then got on the ropeway, trundled up the hill ready to head back to Gala only to realise that they have the exact same times on the ropeway connecting to Gala... they all leave 00, 20, 40. So you get off one ropeway and are left hanging about for another 15 minutes waiting on the next one. Kinda stupid, but there you go. By the time i got back to the main gala area it was around 1pm and i still hadnt got to eat lunch or see ishiuchi. My mood was darkening.

I popped back to blue steel and gobbed down one of their burgers before flying... into a massive queue for the lift. Dammit! forgot about queues. 

10 minutes later and i was away. I rode down the green path on the north side (the swan course) through tonnes of beginners, lost my brain, thought id missed the turning to ishiuchi and went back up the lift again only to be told by the lifty that it was actually where i was and i needed to get the kiddy lift to the top. A little signposting maybe?

Got on the worlds slowest pair lift (though the veracity of this claim has been doubted on the snowjapan forums), to ride a little flat around to ishiuchi. 

Section 3: Ishiuchi

Of all the resorts i wanted to hit, this place was at the top. It not only had a brochure for its park, but it also had one called ishiuchi powder land. Clearly this was going to be the best of all three. It looked big, open and had great diversity in its runs. It did lack some length of course, but even the photo of the resort showed that fun was definitely on the cards. 

(fun... only not at ishiuchi - more of the south side of gala). 

And then i got there.

Nothing but ice, slush and crud. All the tracked out areas had melted and frozen and melted and frozen and become pure evil crud. The gelends were bumpy with some nasty moguls scattered here and there, and all round it was just kinda... dull. There were a few lines you could happily just bomb, and thats nice, but without powder the whole zone just felt really flat. I did try and pop into every side ungroomed part, but immediately rued the mistake when it was yet again top quality crud, and rode back onto the groomers. And the thing is, almost all of the groomers felt the same. The only difference seemed to be just how much leeway the groomers let the skiers mogul it out. 

It did have a nice cute baby park though which was nice. It also had a fairly solid looking park with several decent kickers and a few jib features. So that was nice as well. But honestly... if id have paid to ride only here i might have been even more annoyed than i was. I guess its my own fault for hyping it in my head, but the place just completely failed to deliver anything but a few charging ice walls. And i mean honestly, theyre nice when you want a bit of speed, but they arent really long enough to be technically challenging or fun. You get off the lift, you hit the steep, you carve down it, you unclip and get back on the lift. 

I dont know. I didnt have long here and maybe it was just because it had been relatively sunny most of the day, but it was seriously poor conditions and it seemed really exposed to the point that this would be much more common than uncommon. If you get here directly after a drop it might be a riot, but if a single ray of sunshine should hit that resort its melt/freeze time. 

And heres another thing... aside the park side, a lot of this mountain felt rather skier friendly. I dont know if this is correct of course, but my instinct told me that this place is really an awesome powder zone for SKIERS to learn to ride powder. I wish i could clarify what i mean by this, instead im going to suggest that im right but offer no evidence at all to back the claim up. It just felt like if you were a skier this place might be a lot more fun (and playpark like fun) for you as you learn to start dealing with powder skiing. 

For me it was a massive waste of my time. I really regreted that i wasnt lapping the chair at the south side of gala. I really really regretted the decision though when i took a wrong turn back to gala and ended up coming back down into ishiuchi and realising the one connector lift to the central gala zone was heaving with people. 

<Snake snake snake snake> then bulleted down the green run to the base station through MILLIONS of other people scattering them like skittles (of course i didnt, but i seriously felt like it). 

I made it just in time for the 4pm bus to be told there was no 4pm or 4.05pm bus after all and id have to wait until 4.15. (A bus i should add that was due to arrive at echigo five minutes later, but arrived at 4.31). Do you need to know this? I dunno. It annoyed the shit out me though and in part, i blame this on ishiuchi making me into a mean bad tempered little ass :) 

Conclusion:

There's a few things i learned about this little recon mission.

The first was that Gala Yuzawa is significantly better than i anticipated. Its not the stuff of a serious days boarding, but if you live in or near Tokyo and just wake up one day and feel like pulling a sickie to go for a ride this place is going to give you a great day on the slopes. It might get a bit familiar after a few days so i wouldn't come here for an extensive period of time, but a day trip in the right conditions and you'll have yourself a great day out. Its a cracking little place to be honest. 

The second thing i learned is that yuzawa kogen, beautiful as it is, is still rather small. Were that red run a bit more open and a bit more interesting (and not just a zig zag cut into a slope), it might stretch out to a day. Otherwise half day maximum. A yuzawa kogen ticket on its own wont really deliver more than a couple of hours. I was barely there for an hour and i felt id seen enough. 

Third, ishiuchi is at the mercy of the elements. I have a feeling that given the right conditions it would be a lot of fun for a day out and might even deliver on its powder land promise. But a bit of exposure to the sun and its game over. It makes the place feel really one dimensional and all the runs feel like mirrors of each other. There seems to be a decent top to bottom run in it, but i didnt have the energy, time, or mood to run it. Pity because it might have cheered me up a bit. It does mean though that unlike the kogen, i am prepared to give ishiuchi another crack at it. It feels very much like i saw it in its worst light when i was in an already foul mood from trying to see it all before the day ended. 

Finally, the pass itself is fantastically good value for money and easy has two days worth of terrain to hit. But given that both ishiuchi and gala have enough in themselves to keep you entertained im not entirely sure if you need to shell out on it. 

Its nice in that it gives you a reason to go and see yuzawa kogen and enjoy it, but maybe a gala pass that included just the kogen would have been a better way to go. The two resorts feel like they complement each other rather well and the link is after all only a very short ropeway across. Maybe they should just throw in a quad lift, link the resorts up, and just call it all gala yuzawa :) Ishiuchi feels like it has its own vibe to it and its really the gala/ishiuchi that's selling this pass. 

Would i buy it again? It's certainly possible. Maybe if i want to check out ishiuchi but dont want to get stuck there if the conditions are kinda lame. I mean it is only 700 yen at the end of the day here. Its three resorts, and i already know im likely to skip the Kogen next time im there, so maybe that gives me a bit more time to play in the south area of yuzawa and also play in ishiuchi before it turns to crud. Its also pretty decent that i can start and end right next to echigo yuzawa station instead of gala if i want. 

All in all, 4900 yen and a pretty decent run out with minimal fuss and annoyance. The connections could be improved slightly regarding timings (gala->kogen->gala) and signposting (gala->ishiuchi->gala), but other than that its a great place to come if you just feel you need to get a sneaky day under your belt. The terrains good fun, theres plenty of diversity, there's plenty of places you can also just chill out and relax at. There's not much i can really say that's all that bad... except maybe you shouldn't try and see it all in one day. 

If you're here for a couple of days you might be better spending a day at gala first and then shelling out on day 2 for the three day pass. Other than that its pretty much worth it if only to get a little feel for the place. All in, its a nice little getaway. Pull a sickie, pick up one of the cheap return shink/lift pass weekday deals and hit it up. You'll find its far better than you maybe thought.