Skiing in Inaka

This weekend we tried out the skiing in Inaka. There are various Ski resorts in the area, but we tried the closest one, called "Blache Takayama"(Official resort homepage, Snow-Japan information in English .

We got there after a 25 minute drive up the 152 just after lunch time. It was snowing continuously, so that by the end of the day, our car was covered by 10 cm of snow.

Thomas hired his skis, boots and poles at station two (higher up), while I brought my own skis.



Station 2 is equiped with a fast 4 people chair lift, that allows skiing without too much delay. Station 1 is further down, and is mainly for beginners, and children. So you would need to take a long lift up to station 2 first, before serious skiing can commence.

The resort is not big, but not small either. It makes for a nice weekend of skiing with a variety of slope types. There are no difficult slopes, the maximum could perhaps be graded as red (European scale). I found they have one special area called "Mogul & Air Park", which included special practice moguls, and two large ramps for jumping (looked fun). The upper slopes were enjoyable given the good snow conditions, without posing any major difficulty. Off-piste does not seem possible.

We skied on firmly prepared slopes, with a nice layer of soft fresh snow, so that even despite the snowing we greatly enjoyed the feeling of the powder.



I was particular impressed by the children area. They have a tiny standing lift (looks like a conveyor belt) so that even tiny humans can go up, and use the sledges to go down. They also had a truck tire slope, that looked incredibly fun. Of course there is a ski-park for the small ones too, as well as an indoor care centre, if parents want to go off on their own. According to the rental guy, they have skis and boots for rent, fitting children starting from age 3.

On sunday the weather was improved, so that we also had a nice view of the mountain panorama, and we could see the other ski resorts around us.



Next time we will try one of the other resorts nearby, it will be fun to explore them one by one.