Do you need a guide for Mt. Yotei?
We took one, and I would again. Six of us went, all friends from work in Tokyo, including Yoshi and Shin, and Shin organised the whole thing. He found a Japanese guide rather than one of the foreign-run outfits in Niseko, which is noticeably cheaper, and he booked two days instead of one.
That was the best decision of the trip. Yotei stands on its own above the Niseko valley with nothing around it to break the weather, so it gets whatever the sky is doing that morning, at full strength. One booked day is one roll of the dice.
We actually ended up with a different guide each day, a slightly older man on the first and a younger one on the second. Same meeting point, same car park, completely different mountain.
Day one: turned back above the tree line
We met around 7am. It was snowing, it was cold, and it was windy. None of us knew the terrain yet, so we were discovering the area as we climbed.
We got a little above the tree line and stopped. It was pretty advanced in the day by then, the weather was not improving, and one of the group was really struggling. We turned around.
It was the right call and it was not a close one. And here is the part people skip when they write about turnarounds: the way down was excellent. The snow quality was superb. No summit, and we still had a lot of fun on the mountain, which is more or less the deal Hokkaido offers you in February.
The gear problem that made the call for us
One of our group had two problems at once, and they compounded.
First, his splitboard bindings were already failing before we started. It was a pretty bad quality setup and it was not holding, so every transition cost him energy and time he did not have.
Second, he was wearing one very thick coat instead of layers. On a skin track in cold weather that is the classic mistake. You get hot, you sweat inside the coat, and the moment you stop moving you are wet and freezing... and there is nothing you can do about it on the hill.
He had also, very honestly, overestimated what he could do that day. All three things together stopped the group. Not the weather on its own.
Test the kit at HOME. The car park is a bad place to find out your bindings are broken.
He made the right decision the next morning and sat day two out.
Day two: the summit
Sunny! Still windy, so not perfect, but we could see the sun and feel the sun, which on Yotei in February counts as a good day.
Five of us went up. It took somewhere around five to six hours to the top. The climb is one long, steady, relentless skin up a cone, and the reward is standing on one of the most iconic mountains in Japan looking down over the whole Niseko valley.
Iconic mountain, good friends, tough but doable, and then you get to ski it. We took a ton of photos at the top and took our sweet time coming down, because the snow was still really, really good. This is what I live for. Such a good day!!
How much does a guide cost on Yotei?
Roughly ¥100,000 per day. Split six ways it is manageable, but it still remains pretty expensive, and it changes how you think about the trip.
It cut both ways for us. Knowing what day two was costing is part of why we were so committed to getting up: this is now or never, we took the guide, we have to do it. But it is also exactly why booking two days is the right call rather than the expensive one. A single day that the weather takes from you is a total loss. The second day is the only thing that turns a cancelled trip into a summit.
Planning notes if you are going
- Book two days. The cost per summit is lower than one day and a coin flip.
- A Japanese guide is meaningfully cheaper than a foreign-run outfit in Niseko for the same mountain.
- Layer properly. It is a long, warm climb in cold air. One big coat will ruin your day.
- Check your bindings and your skins before you fly. Especially splitboard hardware.
- A turnaround is not a wasted day here. The skiing on the way down is the reason people come to Hokkaido in the first place.
What it really did was give us the appetite for more. Rishiri, up off the north coast of Hokkaido, is the next one on the list, and everyone who has done it says it is absolutely epic and an adventure in itself. There is so much terrain up there that this could go on forever, which suits me fine.