We mostly just get on with guiding and let the skiing speak for itself, but every so often someone from the international press comes out, skis with us, and writes it up. A few recent pieces worth a read if you want the outside perspective on what we do — and why people keep finding their way to this corner of snow country.
SnowBrains: 25 feet of snow in 12 days
Writer Daryn Edmunds joined us in early February 2025 for what turned into one of the more legendary storm cycles either of us has seen — the piece clocks 2–3 feet a day for the best part of two weeks. He frames the trip as “Japan 3.0”: past Niseko, past Hakuba, into the lesser-known terrain around Gunma and Niigata — Mt T (Tanigawadake), Hodaigi, and Okutone. Our founder Mike Harris and the guide team get a proper mention for the exclusive first-tracks access and for showing him terrain most visiting skiers never find. Fair to say he left buried in the good kind of trouble.
Read the full trip report on SnowBrains (reference, opens in a new tab).
SKI Magazine: Japan’s Snow Country
Outside contributor Brent Rose spent two weeks with us across Minakami and Yuzawa in February 2025, and the piece that came out of it — “Japan’s Next Big Powder Mecca Has All the Snow and Few Crowds” — is one of the better outside descriptions of this region we’ve seen. He gets the “Snow Country” name right (it comes from Yasunari Kawabata’s Nobel Prize-winning novel, set in Yuzawa), covers early-access first tracks at Mt T, side-country days at Hodaigi and Okutone, and — the part that means the most to us — a proper introduction to Takumi Nagai at Hakkaisan, who runs the resort’s exclusive backcountry gate, builds custom skis and boards under his own Voltage MFG label, and sits on the local city council pushing to bring more visitors to the area. Between the soba, the sake breweries, and the onsens, it’s a genuinely accurate picture of what a proper Snow Country trip looks like.
Travel + Leisure Asia: planning a Japan ski trip
Travel + Leisure Asia’s Jonny Bierman put together a proper deep-dive into the region — 29 resorts, 8 metres of snow in the 2024-25 season, ryokans, sake breweries, the lot. Mike gets a proper feature in it too, talking about what drew him to Minakami in the first place: “Minakami, in particular, really struck me as the Queenstown of Japan.” The piece also lays out Canyons Japan’s role as the official guiding company and ski school operator at Mt. T, with exclusive first-tracks access on the mountain’s closed days. If you want the full rundown on where to stay, ski, eat, and soak across Minakami and Yuzawa, this is a genuinely thorough one.
Want the same trip?
The terrain that had SnowBrains buried in 25 feet of snow is the same terrain we take our guests into — have a look at our Mt T (Minakami) Area Info or browse the full Backcountry Tours lineup. Or just get in touch and we’ll talk you through it.
