Yokomuki Onsen
A tiny two-lift hot-spring hill below Mount Bandai with 80 metres of vertical, closed in 2018; half of it reopened in 2022 as a tree-run course at the ski area next door.
- Region
- Fukushima Prefecture
- Country
- Japan
- Status
- abandoned
- Year opened
- 1960s
- Year closed
- 2018
- Reason for closure
- Not explicitly stated in the surviving record. The area had a complicated late history, opening only intermittently between 2014 and 2018 before stopping altogether.
History
Yokomuki Onsen (横向温泉スキー場) was a small hot-spring ski area in Inawashiro Town in Fukushima Prefecture, on the flanks below Mount Bandai. Its opening year is unconfirmed but it is visible on aerial imagery from 1971 and is believed to date from the 1960s. Two lifts served two separate patches of ground - a pair lift of about 400 m across from the hotel, and a single chair of about 300 m to the north-west that had been shut for many years before the end - covering two courses with a longest run of 500 m, a steepest pitch of 32 degrees and only 80 m of vertical between a 1,080 m base and a 1,160 m top. Its final years were erratic, opening only intermittently between 2014 and 2018 before stopping for good. Both lift structures remain. The more interesting afterlife is on the pair lift slope, which reopened in 2022 as the D Course, a tree run belonging to the neighbouring Minowa Ski Area - a rare case in this dataset of abandoned terrain being absorbed back into a working resort. The single lift ground is still undeveloped. The coordinates mark Minowa Ski Area, immediately adjacent.
Lifts
| Name | Type | Manufacturer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unnamed lift | Chairlift - Double | Roughly 400 m, across from the Mount Bandai hotel. Still in place; its slope reopened in 2022 as the D Course tree run of the neighbouring Minowa Ski Area | |
| Unnamed lift | Chairlift - Single | Roughly 300 m, north-west of the hotel; closed for many years before the area itself shut. Still standing, in ground that remains undeveloped |
Sources and further reading
More in Japan
Location
37.6510, 140.2594