【4K SKI JAPOW】かぐらスキー場｜2026Season｜滑走コース紹介（Kagura Ski Resort）-2025/3/6
By: Real Japan Nature · 2026-03-17
🇯🇵 Japan · Niigata
Kagura
かぐらスキー場
Off season Official site Lift tickets (official) Last season (2025/26) adult day ticket ¥7,500 Kagura 1-day (Kagura, Mitsumata and Tashiro) · this season's price not yet published (as of 16 Sept)
Kagura, in Niigata, Japan, runs from 550 m at the base to 1,845 m at the top.
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 565 cm of snowfall a season, 33rd of the 397 ski areas we measure in Japan. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2021/22 (717 cm), brought more than twice as much as the leanest, 2015/16 (241 cm). January is usually the snowiest month, with about 186 cm. Snowfall days are cold, averaging −6.6 °C at mid-mountain, and its snow-quality score ranks 34th of 397 in Japan.
The nearest city of any size is Maebashi, about 56 km away. Below are links to 3 official live cameras.
Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear here once snow starts to fall. Until then, the long-run record comes first.
Temperature
9.8℃
Max wind
7.9km/h
Elevation
550–1845m
How much snow it gets
Measured by us across 3,069 ski areas by one identical method. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Seasonal snowfall
565 cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
241 cm
A typical winter: 595 cm. The best: 717 cm.
World rank
55
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
33
of 397 in Japan
Elevation rank
36
Highest to lowest, of 397 in Japan. The centre point sits at 1,500 m, 734 m above the national median.
Quality rank
34
of 397 in Japan
Temp when snowing
-6.6°C
Japanese median: -3.5°C
Rain days
22%
Japanese median: 16%
Days over 5 cm
36%
Japanese median: 15%
Wind when snowing
19 km/h
Dryness 0.61
Frequency 1.00
Freedom from rain 0.42
Calm when snowing 0.95
The tick marks the median across every Japanese ski area we measure. All four bars run the same way — longer is better.
The quality score deliberately excludes how much snow falls — it uses temperature, frequency, rain and wind. Snowing a lot and snowing well are different things.
Compared with what is nearby
Within 50 km straight line. Measured the same way, so the ranks compare directly. Ski areas a few kilometres apart share a weather grid cell and can return the same figure.
| Ski area | Distance | Seasonal snowfall | World rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mitsumata Area | 5.9 km | 589 cm | 45 |
| Tashiro Area | 6.0 km | 447 cm | 113 |
| Kandatsu Kogen Ski Resort | 6.0 km | 618 cm | 36 |
| Kagura Area | 6.6 km | 542 cm | 69 |
| Naeba | 6.8 km | 446 cm | 114 |
When it falls, and how winters differ
Month by month
Month by month, the most snow falls in January. March brings 52% of January’s snowfall. That is in line with the median for ski areas in Japan (52%). In amount, March brings 96 cm, more than the median of 46 cm.
155cmDec
186cmJan
128cmFeb
96cmMar
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 565 cm, and 5 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2015/16 with 241 cm; the biggest was 2021/22 with 717 cm (3.0 times as much). For 63% of the 397 ski areas in Japan, the leanest winter was the same 2015/16: bad winters tend to hit a whole region at once.
241
717
14/1515/1616/1717/1818/1919/2020/2121/2222/2323/2424/2525/26
Snowfall each winter (December–March total). The dashed line is the average; the numbers mark the leanest and the biggest winter.
Live Cameras
On the mountainWatch live ↗Operated by: かぐらスキー場Roads nearby国道17号 ↗From the resort: 5.1 kmOperated by: 北陸地方整備局 長岡国道事務所Roads nearby国道17号 ↗From the resort: 9 kmOperated by: 関東地方整備局 高崎河川国道事務所
Road conditions decide whether you can get there at all. Check before you leave.
Footage remains the copyright of each operator. JAPANSNOWLINE neither stores nor redistributes it.
Naeba and Kagura webcams & snow report — all 3 ski areas →
See the snow in motion
Videos remain the copyright of whoever filmed them. JAPANSNOWLINE stores no video and plays everything through the standard YouTube player.
Hot springs nearby, as analysed
2 hot spring sources with published analyses lie within 5 km of this ski area, nearest first (the hottest is 38.5 °C).
| Source | Distance | Temperature | pH | Type | Analysed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 猿倉猿倉の湯 | 3.1 km | 38.5℃ warm | — | — | — |
| 貝掛貝掛 | 3.9 km | 37℃ warm | 6.8 neutral | — | — |
These are analyses of hot spring sources, not a list of baths you can visit. They date from 1910 to 2005, many from decades ago, so today’s temperature and chemistry may differ. Names are as recorded in Japanese. Temperature and pH bands follow Japan’s standard for analysing hot springs.
Source: processed from the hot spring analysis data in the Geothermal Information Database (GRES-DB), Geological Survey of Japan, AIST
Worth seeing nearby
Places within 20 km of this ski area, for a day off the slopes or an evening. Chosen from those most read about on Wikipedia, favouring places with an English Wikipedia article, and listed nearest first.
| Place | Type | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Mount Naeba苗場山 | Mountain | 10 km |
| Mount Tanigawa谷川岳 | Mountain | 11.4 km |
| Kiyotsu Gorge清津峡 | Nature | 13.9 km |
| Tanigawadake Ropeway谷川岳ロープウェイ | Nature | 14.3 km |
| Doai Station土合駅 | Landmark | 14.8 km |
| Shima Onsen四万温泉 | Hot spring town | 18.3 km |
Based on the Japanese Wikipedia lists of sights in each prefecture, as compiled in travel-log-data (CC BY-SA 4.0). English names from Wikidata (CC0). The content of this section is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Map
Where it sits relative to nearby resorts. For a piste map, see the official site.
Official piste map ↗ Coordinates: 36.8494, 138.8022
Places to stay nearby
7 properties on Rakuten Travel lie within 3 km of this ski area, listed cheapest first.
| Property | From | Rating | Distance | Getting there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ｌｉｔｔｌｅ Ｊａｐａｎ Ｅｃｈｉｇｏ | ¥5,400 | — | 2.1 km | ＪＲ上越新幹線 越後湯沢駅よりお車にて約２０分 |
| 貝掛温泉 | ¥21,800 | 4.68 311 reviews | 3.8 km | 越後湯沢駅よりバスにて25分。関越自動車道の湯沢ＩＣよりお車にて15分。 |
| ｐｌａｙ＆ｃｒａｚｙペンション | — | — | 1.7 km | 越後湯沢駅よりお車にて約２０分 |
| なかじま屋 | — | 4.86 58 reviews | 2.0 km | 越後湯沢駅より車で２５分（１７ｋｍ） |
| Ｌｉｔｔｌｅ Ｊａｐａｎ（リトルジャパン） | — | — | 2.1 km | 浅草橋駅（JR中央・総武線、都営浅草線）から徒歩7分 |
| ロッヂモントゼー | — | — | 2.2 km | 越後湯沢より車で約25分、関越自動車道湯沢ＩＣより約20分 |
| キャシーズイン ホテル＆ロッジ | — | — | 2.5 km | 車：関越自動車道湯沢ICで降り国道17号を苗場方面。新幹線：越後湯沢駅下車、路線バスにて苗場方面「二居田代」下車。 |
Contains advertising · Property data by Rakuten Travel (Supported by Rakuten Developers)
More places to look
What we have measured at Kagura
- Snow Quality or Snow Quantity: Why Japan's Snowiest Ski Areas Are Not Its Best Japan's snowiest ski areas see rain on more than one winter day in four, and the wettest of them on two in five. We rank all 397 of them on a quality measure that ignores how much falls and scores what falls: temperature on snowing days, how often it dumps, and penalties for rain and wind. It disagrees with the snowfall ranking almost completely.
- Which Japanese Ski Areas Keep Their Snow at 4°C of Warming? New research from Hokkaido University puts 7 ski areas on stable natural snow at 4°C. Our own data on 397 Japanese ski areas says 17 of the ranking's top 20 are on the wrong side of that line.
- Will There Be Snow at Japan's Winter Festivals? Three Winters, Measured Japan's winter festivals are photographed in deep snow. We measured what was actually on the ground during each one across three winters — and checked the 580-year record of a frozen lake that has now failed eight years running.
- Japan's Snowiest Prefecture Grows the Most Rice. That Is Not a Coincidence. We ranked 3,069 ski areas by snowfall. The Ministry of Agriculture counts rice by prefecture. Put the two together and the rank correlation is 0.65 — the snow that buries Niigata in January is the water in the paddy in June.
- Snow Predicts Where Sake Rice Grows. Then There Is Hyogo. Across Japan, snowfall and sake rice production correlate at 0.64 — the meltwater argument holds. The country's largest producer grows twice the runner-up on half the snow, and the reason is a single variety.
Updated: 8 Oct 2026, 00:52