Abandoned lifts, unpredictable snow, and the kind of day that’s impossible to forget.

Imagine skinning past rusted chairlifts, overgrown pistes, and long‑forgotten lift stations, all while the Sea of Japan stretches out below you. That’s exactly what Youtuber Blaize Kelly found on a recent tour of Iwanai ski resort, a partly abandoned ski area located on the northern slopes of Iwanai‑dake, about 40–45 minutes’ drive north west of the main Niseko resorts.

Sitting closer to the coast than Niseko, the mountain offers a unique perspective on Hokkaido’s winter landscape, with sweeping sea views that contrast sharply with the inland powder fields. With a warm spell hitting the region, Blaize needed “something new and challenging to take our mind off the lack of fresh powder,” and Iwanai offered a very different flavour of winter adventure.

Iwanai’s ski history goes back to 1980, when Niseko Iwanai Kokusai opened on the northern slopes of Iwanai‑dake. Over the years it went through multiple names and lift installations – a quad, pairs and singles – before much of the lift infrastructure ceased operation in the early 2000s, and only one pair lift remains on the lower mountain today. What this means on the ground is striking: unused chairlift towers still stand as relics of a more active era, while the upper mountain’s terrain is now mostly accessed by skinning or snowcat.

In fact, Iwanai Resort (its current name) has become one of Japan’s better‑known cat‑skiing operations, where snowcats ferry riders up to untouched faces above the abandoned pistes – making it a very different sort of experience from the lift‑served lines of Niseko.

With “warm temperatures, a thin snowpack, and close to 1000m vert” to the summit, Blaize’s day quickly became a test of endurance and problem-solving. “It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t smooth. But it was exactly why I love ski touring,” he says.