Rusutsu Reviews & Discussions

Rusutsu is located in the skiing Mecca that is the island of Hokkaido. Most notably the home of the world’s finest powder snow, but also soup curry, miso ramen, yubari melon soft ice cream and Sapporo beer.

Even in March, Hokkaido was experiencing 7.5 metres of snow, and there had been a fresh dump on the day we landed.

Rusutsu is well protected by Mount Yotei, so less susceptible to slushy afternoons. It has a really good system of linked (and new) lifts, and a parochial, authentically Japanese feel to both the skiing and the evening events, which featured local talent like the urban ambient handpan sound of Punduro, and the emotive and distinctive traditional music of The Tomomi Takahashi Trio, as part of the Rusutsu 100 Days of Music festival.

The skiing itself at Rusutsu is nothing short of epic. It has 42 km of prepared piste, made up of three distinct parts of the mountain, but that is - of course - supplemented by the tree-line skiing. West Mountain is the lower and smaller of the three parts, but is also more adjacent to the main hotel and restaurant areas. We particularly enjoyed skiing there one evening as part of a floodlit night ski, where the most enjoyable runs open to us - some of the steeper runs were closed - were Bambi (Red 16) and Eva (Red 17).

The other two ski areas - East Mountain and Mount Isola - are a lateral gondola ride away. Mount Isola is the absolute stand-out: some of the runs felt like millionaire skiing, cutting fresh tracks through beautiful looking virgin piste-bashed grooves, carving our way down wide open motorways created between rows of Hokkaido silver birch trees. Of course, skiing in Hokkaido is absolutely synonymous with skiing and boarding the powder between the trees, like you see in Warren Miller videos. March was not really the best time for tree-lined skiing, and neither were the Carver skis we had brought out with us - ideally we needed All-Mountain - but I will never forget weaving in and out of some of the trees on the edge of Steamboat A (Red 25) and trying to duck below the odd low-lying branch here and there. The longest piste on the mountain - Isola Grand (Red 27) - is only 3.5 km in length, but it has some fabulous variety with a nice flourish at the bottom heading for the Isola Gondola (Lift 12). Also, peeling off Isola Grand onto Isola D (Red 24) gave a fantastic bit of steep down to the Across No. 2 Pair Lift (Lift 19), where you can really build up a bit of speed.

Heavenly is another part of Mount Isola which overlooks the exquisite Lake Toya, and contains a variety of red and black diamond runs such as Heavenly View (Red 20), Heavenly Trail (Red 22) and Heavenly Canyon (Black 13). Almost all the black diamonds are ungroomed. Heavenly Ridge A (Black 14) is the only groomed black on all of Mount Isola and East Mountain combined.

There is no direct way off the mountain at the bottom of Mount Isola. So, toward the end of each day we - like everyone else - gravitated back to East Mountain, where we used the runs on East Mountain itself. East Tignes (Red 18) is the one that is immediately outside the top of the East No. 2 Gondola (Lift 7), but we much preferred East Vivaldi (Red 18) which had some good pitch to it, without being too demanding technically.

The lift staff are the most polite and respectful anywhere I have ever been. They are perpetually bowing, taking your skis from you and putting them in the gondola rack, and uttering some pleasantry or other, breeding a reciprocal respect. I have never nodded as much - in a poor attempt at showing appreciation - in my whole life.

The mountain restaurants all look disappointingly industrial, particularly from the outside. The largest of them is Steamboat, a self-serve cafeteria. The best on-mountain eating experience by far was at the Isola 2000 Steak and Seafood Grill at the bottom of the Isola Gondola (Lift 12), whose signature dish is a fabulous clam chowder served in a hollowed-out bread patty, with a Sapporo Nama Beer.

All in all, I loved my time in Rusutsu and I can’t wait to go back again.