This year, Japan has exploded as a destination as coverage on TikTok and other social media has fuelled record visitor numbers to popular tourist spots and the famous ski resorts of Hokkaido. This has brought an influx of travellers from further afield and noticeably changed the demographic of visitors. Asia’s ski tourists are predominately beginners and intermediates, but Europeans and Americans, travelling on the strong dollar, bring a different kind of snowsports enthusiast. This not only means packed bars, restaurants and long lift lines in the resorts, it also means heavily tracked tree runs and lumpy pistes by mid-morning.
As an antidote to this, enter Aomori Spring, the perfectly positioned Hokkaido-adjacent ski resort that’s just remote enough to keep the crowds away. Yet it also has everything experienced international skiers and snowboarders are looking for: high-quality dry powder snow; modern, western-style hotel rooms with private bathrooms; true ski-in, ski-out accommodation; minimal lift lines; reasonably priced guiding; English-speaking guides and instructors; Hokkaido-level snow reliability – and excellent value lift tickets.
Aomori Spring ski resort. Image supplied
In this article, we’ll look deeper into why Aomori Spring is the perfect resort for more experienced skiers and riders, and how it compares to a visit to one of Japan’s more famous ski resorts.
A seemingly deserted island
The remote geography of Aomori Spring has led to staff giving it the nickname “The Island” and it’s immediately apparent why when you visit. The mountain is surrounded by a sea of snowy farmland, and the Rockwood Hotel is the only hotel in the resort. At night when the locals leave the resort, it becomes eerily quiet and deserted. Only when you go to dinner do you realise that the hotel is full with people who take their snowsports seriously.
The mountain is surrounded by a sea of snowy farmland, and the Rockwood Hotel is the only hotel in the resort. Image supplied
Even so, with just 188 rooms and not another hotel in sight, it means competition for first lift is pleasingly low (on my last visit, my pass allowed me to skip the lines, but I didn’t need to once). Disaster posting on social media of long lift lines in Hokkaido seems to have reached new levels this season. Aomori Spring is the complete opposite of that: no lines, empty pistes and relatively untracked trees.
“The remote geography of Aomori Spring has led to staff giving it the nickname ‘The Island’ and it’s immediately apparent why when you visit.”
Hokkaido-level snow reliability
Aomori Spring powder. Image supplied
Aomori Spring isn’t in Hokkaido, but it’s about as close as you can get, so you know that there’s going to be a lot of dry and fluffy powder. Usually, the snow is respectable and consistent, but this season has been stupidly good with more than double the snow depth of their previous best year.
As I write, from 28 January until 13 February there has been only one day without snow, while Snow Forecast predicts 77cm over the next 12 days and snow every single day. Historically, the resort gets a whopping average of five powder days a week from late December to the end of February, but this year it’s been closer to seven. It’s also important to note that without the crowds that the big resorts get, 4 or 5 cm and a bit of wind overnight to blow things around is more than enough for a full reset at Aomori Spring, whereas more popular resorts need 20-30cm to fill in the tree moguls that have been scratched out of the snow base.
Unexplored backcountry
Backcountry touring in Japan has exploded in recent seasons, boosted by people taking up the sport in their own countries during covid. This means that instead of a handful of groups heading through the gates into the backcountry at the big resorts, you might find the backcountry a little busier than you expected. In the beech forests and above the tree line on Mount Iwake, you’re rarely going to find anyone else.
You don’t even need to hike that far to unlock the deserted backcountry at Aomori Spring. Last season, our group was guided by US Olympic gold medallist Kaitlyn Farrington and after we had spent the day exploring the lift-accessed trees, she gave us a taste of the steeper sidecountry (we didn’t see anybody and ours were the only tracks).
In the beech forests and above the tree line on Mount Iwake, you’re rarely going to find anyone else. Image supplied
This is one of the best things about Aomori Spring. If you’re that way inclined, you can hike to the top of Mount Iwake for the day of a lifetime, but if you prefer, you can hit deep powder on open, ungroomed runs first thing, then spend all day making fresh lines in the trees without having to hike a single step.
Location and getting there
Aomori Spring (pronounced Ow-mori) is right up in the far north-west corner of Honshu, the main island, in the foothills of Mount Iwake – a picture-perfect dormant Japanese volcano that rises out of the surrounding flat land. It’s so close to Hokkaido you can see the mountains across the water on a clear day.
Although Hokkaido looks close, getting to Aomori from Kutchan or Sapporo is still a little tricky. It wouldn’t be worth it if it were easy, as the place would be overrun with day trippers. An overnight trip is feasible, though if you set off by train from Sapporo station at 3:45pm, then get a taxi from Shin-Aomori, you could be in your room at the Rockwood Hotel by around 11pm. But once you’ve made the effort, why not stay for a few days?
It’s surprisingly quick from Tokyo to the north shore on the fast train, taking just a shade over three hours to get to Shin-Aomori. You can then take a taxi, hire a car, or get the train to Ajigasawa Station or Hirosaki Station before taking a shorter and cheaper taxi ride if time is on your side. It’s around a four-and-a-half to six-hour journey, which is only an hour or so longer than it takes to get to Hakuba.
You also have the option of combining Aomori Spring with a road trip to the ski resorts around Morioka or using Aomori as a base to visit the backcountry-focused resort Hakkoda and some of the other small resorts in the area.
Tsugaru-han Neputa Mura. Image supplied
One cultural highlight within reach is Neputa Village, also known as Tsugaru-han Neputa Mura – a museum and tourist attraction in nearby Hirosaki that showcases the city’s culture and the Neputa Matsuri festival.
True Exclusivity
What exactly is exclusivity in a ski resort anyway? Newly built upmarket hotels? Guest-only restaurants and onsens? Or is it being alone with your group in the trees with knee-deep untracked snow just 20 metres from the top of the lift? To more advanced skiers and riders, the snow and the lack of competition for it is the most important thing. That’s why the US snowboard team come to Aomori Spring every year to get away from the hordes of people at North American resorts and have fun in the trees.
Rockwood Hotel, Aomori Spring. Image supplied
That’s not to say the Rockwood Hotel isn’t luxurious in its own retro and understated way. As the name suggests, the Onsen Suite has a private onsen bath with breathtaking views across the Sea of Japan. But more than that, exclusivity is about how a ski resort makes you feel.
If we compare Aomori Spring with the most famous resort in Japan, of course Niseko United is bigger. It has ultra-luxury accommodation and a wide choice of restaurants, shops, equipment rentals and guides. The problem is, at the height of winter, it can very much make you feel like one of the crowd. If it’s five times bigger with 50 times the people, you’re going to feel the squeeze.
Aomori Spring makes you feel special – as if you’ve discovered something. You feel like a pioneer rather than a follower. When you go into the trees in the morning, you feel like the first one in there (because today you are!). And you can get that feeling for most of the day. Niseko has fantastic tree runs, but after 10am almost everything is tracked and scary moguls are forming between the trees.
Rockwood Hotel onsen, Aomori Spring. Image supplied
This is why my point about demographics is so important. At most of Japan’s ski resorts that are a little bit off the beaten track but popular with locals, the mostly older Japanese skiers and Asian tourists generally stay out of the trees (not everyone of course). Or, at a place like Aomori Spring with a world-class pipe, the young locals lap the park and pipe (and the superpipe at Aomori Spring is a huge draw). This means that foreign tourists who make the pilgrimage can enjoy fresh lines pretty much all day.
Conversely, places like Niseko, Rusutsu, Kiroro, Furano and Hakuba that attract international guests, have thousands of hotel rooms within a 30-minute drive and are near Japanese cities with large populations are obviously going to get smashed after a dump. The big resorts are an attraction for first-time visitors to Japan as they do offer a level of western familiarity and mostly English-speaking staff, but once you’ve done that and you want a taste of the real Japan, then I thoroughly recommend Aomori Spring. Just don’t tell too many people about it.
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