Cat Skiing in Japan or what I've been up to the last 2 winters

I

Idris

New member
I've spent the last 2 winters guiding in a Cat skiing operation near Neaba, Niigata Japan.

When I say guiding, I mean I turned up expecting to work along side other guides in an existing operation.

BUT when I arrived I was presented with this (instructions not included)

FirstView-730x350.jpg


Which in the first season, I taught myself to drive an maintain the beast, surveyed the ski area that hadn't turned a lift in a decade and ended up with this

catski-1024x768.jpg


I think we had 10 days worth of customers the first season. Starting from Scratch I think the boss was happy.

In the autumn I returned gave the cat an overhaul, built a new cabin, better seats, heating etc.

Season 2

MikuniCatView-1024x768.jpg


The cat skiing area is an abandoned side area of Naeba, about 2 hours out of Tokyo.

We are 4km up an old access road, that keeps us very very quiet (less than 10 ski rando per year). While not as light as Hokkido we do get a lot of snow - last year was officially low tide, we got 12m in 2 months!

Typical skiing

MikuninMori1-1024x768.jpg


and snowboarding

MikuniSurfBreak-1024x768.jpg


I've thrown together a new website (should be at www.mikuni-cat.com url and server screw ups at them moment) at www.alpinehike.com

Anyway if anyone's interested it's ¥35,000 (€275/£240) per person , minimum 3 people

Group rate/Private cat is ¥140,00 (€1100/£995) max 10 people

Avie gear and guiding is included, bring your own bento box for lunch ;)

If there are any omissions or suggestions for the website please let me know, I'm not much of a keyboard warrior tks.

Forum mods , if this is too much spam, please let me know and I'll tone it down
 
I wish I got to ski when I was in Japan but I was so busy with my school doing exchange student stuff that I didn't have the chance. I was pretty young at the time too so they didn't really allow us to go do our own thing. I'm jealous.
 
What the fuck, what kind of business owner is this? Yeah I bought this snow cat a bit ago, it hasn't really run much, and I don't know how to use it. I'll hire someone from the internet and start a business with it....

Honestly, he's so lucky to have found you. It's super awesome and all that you two happened into each other, but holy fuck that is quite the coincidence

Edit 1: Also advice: many on NSers, myself included, are too poor to afford this, you may have better luck finding clients on /r/skiing as the general level of skiing is lower and the level of income is higher. This isnt a fuck off to reddit sort of comment, just while I'd love to do this, I don't have the means to, and if I did I might go somewhere with more advanced terrain. My $.02

Edit 2: I added a 2nd comma after "myself included"

**This post was edited on Dec 18th 2018 at 2:50:21pm

**This post was edited on Dec 18th 2018 at 2:52:27pm
 
You need to truck that thing over to Hakuba and get on some steeper terrain - Euro's would book you out years in advance.
 
13974720:RudyGarmisch said:
You need to truck that thing over to Hakuba and get on some steeper terrain - Euro's would book you out years in advance.
Click to expand...

13974728:BigPurpleSkiSuit said:
Are there a lot of snowcat operations there yet?
Click to expand...

Not many Cat skiing operation on Honshu. (main island) But not many places you would be allowed to run one.
 
A couple of days ago I got the cat up to the top of the area.

We've had some snow since, and I didn't catch all of the area (I'm still learning the drone thing). But you will get the idea
 
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