The Hakkoda-san (Mt. Hakkoda) massif is a conglomerate of multiple volcanic peaks in central Aomori Prefecture, northern Honshu. Aomori is the northern-most prefecture of the broad Tohoku region of northern Japan – Tohoku comprises of Aomori, Akita, Iwate, Fukushima, Miyagi, and Yamagata Prefectures. The northern-most three prefectures – Aomori, Akita, and Iwate – get apocalyptic amounts of snow in the winter. Snowfall numbers here easily outstrip those of Hokkaido, further north. While the season tends to be a little shorter than up in Hokkaido, the snow is light, deep, and dry. It is truly the last frontier of backcountry skiing in Japan.

This particular route is squarely intended to be a spring route. The months of January, February, and early March will rarely allow the skier the weather window to spend much more than a few hours in the alpine, before closing in and dumping that inhuman volume of snow the region is well known for. In those deep winter months, therefore, it’s the lower reaches immediately north of the Sukayu Onsen complex that are best suited to almost infinite laps and amazing storm skiing on well-anchored slopes.