Shizukuishi: cat skiing on a former World Championships course

The way to ski Shizukuishi properly is to book the cat. The old women's Super-G course from the 1993 World Championships now runs as a dedicated cat-skiing zone, and it is the single best reason to come here: over 700m of open, pitched vertical, put through a snowcat rather than left to hike or queue for, at somewhere around ¥4,000 a run with a discount for booking several. It is race-grade terrain, wide enough to open right up, and because it needs a cat rather than a lift it never gets tracked out the way a piste does.

That course exists in this shape because Shizukuishi hosted the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in February 1993, opened by Emperor Akihito, the first time the Championships were held in Asia after being split off from the Winter Olympics as their own event. Ten races were skied across the fortnight, including the women's Super-G that now forms the cat-ski run. It is a genuinely significant piece of Japanese ski history, but it is history: no World Cup or Championship race has returned since, and most of the resort today is a fairly ordinary, ageing Prince Hotel mountain rather than a shrine to 1993. The cat skiing is what actually carries the pedigree forward onto snow you can ski this season.

~717mvertical, summit to base

6 lifts20 marked courses

¥6,500adult day pass

700m+cat-ski vertical, ~¥4,000 a run

Plan a trip

Get there: Shinkansen to Morioka, then a 30 to 35-minute drive.
Base: The Shizukuishi Prince Hotel at the base, or a town or Morioka hotel if you want somewhere to walk to in the evening.
Combine: Part of the Morioka cluster: Iwate Kogen and Amihari are next door, Hachimantai, Appi and Geto within the hour.
Book ahead: The cat skiing is pre-booked and worth locking in before you travel.
Pass: ¥6,500 adult, official price; check current rates before you go.

The cat skiing

Shizukuishi's second peak carries the old women's Super-G course, and rather than being reopened as an ordinary piste it now runs as a proper cat-skiing operation: over 700m of open, pitched, pow-filled vertical, put through by snowcat, at roughly ¥4,000 a run with multi-run discounts. Book ahead, since places are limited and it is not something you can just turn up and add to the day. It is the one piece of Shizukuishi that reliably delivers what a powder day here can actually be, rather than the groomed cruising the rest of the mountain mostly offers.

PowderZone

Where to find the easy-access powder after a dump

The groomed blacks are worth an early lap before the piste crew gets to them, and the trees between runs are officially off-limits but tolerated if you are discreet about it. For the real thing, though, it is the pre-booked cat run on the second peak.

The mountain

Six lifts serve 20 marked courses: one ropeway, one high-speed quad and four pair chairs, with no gondola currently running the route to the very top, so reaching the summit takes more than one lift. Prince Hotels puts the summit at 1,145m and the base at 428m, for around 717m of vertical. Sources disagree on the beginner-to-advanced split of the terrain, so it is not printed here as a settled percentage; expect a mountain that is mostly cruising, with a genuine downhill-grade pitch on the old race courses for anyone who wants it.

The longest ordinary groomed trail runs to around 2,648m. The former Championships course itself is longer again, cited at anywhere from 3.4 to 4.5km depending on the source, and is the run behind the resort's reputation rather than the everyday trail map.

Snow

Shizukuishi gets around 6.6m of snowfall a season, over a season running roughly mid-December to late March and around 93 open days. That is noticeably less than the figures usually quoted for Appi Kogen (around 12m) or Geto Kogen (around 15m) further into the Iwate cluster, which is plausible rather than suspicious: Shizukuishi's base sits lower, at 428m, than either of those, and a lower base station in this part of Japan often means a lower snowfall total measured there specifically.

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Getting there

Shinkansen to Morioka, then a 30 to 35-minute drive, the same band as Iwate Kogen and Amihari on the wider Morioka rotation. Shizukuishi is part of that wider cluster of small Tohoku resorts reachable from a Morioka base, covered in full there.

Where to stay

The Shizukuishi Prince Hotel sits directly at the base, one big slopeside block with the rentals, the onsen and the ticket window all under one roof, and no real town or nightlife of its own. If you would rather have somewhere to walk to in the evening, or you are coming by train, the town itself has real alternatives: Tabist Shizukuishi Resort Hotel, Pension Sanrinsha, and Hotel Morinokaze Oshuku at the higher end. None of it is nightlife in the way a bigger resort town is, but it beats being stuck in the one hotel.

Need to know

Lift pass: ¥6,500 adult, official price; check current rates, since these move season to season.
Cat skiing: Pre-booked, on the former women's Super-G course. Roughly ¥4,000 a run with multi-run discounts.
Getting there: Shinkansen to Morioka, then a 30 to 35-minute drive.
Where to stay: The Shizukuishi Prince Hotel at the base, or the town itself for more choice and somewhere to walk to.
Best for: Race-pedigree terrain and pre-booked cat powder, without much else going on around it.