March 3, 2025
AOMORI – More and more foreign visitors have been getting lost, buried in avalanches and facing other trouble while skiing or snowboarding on mountains in Aomori Prefecture, prompting calls for increased precautions before hitting the slopes.
Visitors from overseas, whose numbers have bounced back strongly since the end of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, have accounted for at least half of those who had trouble in the snow in recent years. The Aomori prefectural police and other authorities are urging tourists from Japan and abroad who visit local ski facilities to exercise greater caution when out on the mountains.
Some organizations also are calling on skiers to carry beacons to signal their location, a useful tool for finding people buried under the snow.
As the wind howled on Feb. 7, about 30 people, including police officers and mountain guides, participated in a rescue training session near Hakkoda Ropeway’s Sanroku Station in Aomori City. With the aid of a beacon, participants used rescue probes to find a backpack standing in for a person buried under the snow.
At a separate location, participants placed someone playing the role of a rescued skier on a stretcher and skied to the foot of the mountain with the stretcher in tow. The exercise was also used to teach other search methods and how to coordinate a rescue.
“In recent years, many visitors from overseas have ended up getting into difficulty,” said Yukinobu Tsushima, leader of the rescue training squad from Aomori Police Station. “It’s vital that guides, the police and firefighters work together to improve our search techniques.”
According to the prefectural police, there were 10 incidents in which people got into distress on snowy mountains between December 2024 and Feb. 25. These 10 incidents involved a total of 18 people, 10 of whom were non-Japanese.
During the previous winter season, which ran from December 2023 until April 2024, there were 12 such incidents involving a total of 14 people, which included seven from abroad. Many of these people reportedly became lost due to poor visibility and other reasons while in or around areas managed by ski resorts, according to the police.
A search starts by asking the person who is in distress for their location and trying to determine their whereabouts based on a GPS location for the mobile phone that made an emergency call.
However, radio signals are often blocked by mountains, so pinpointing a person’s location can take time. Tourists from overseas often use foreign mobile phone carriers, so detecting their position can be even more difficult because of the complex communication links needed for GPS information to reach the police.
In a bid to reduce the number of people who get into trouble, the prefectural police created posters urging people to be aware that off-course skiing is dangerous, and that search and rescue operations are extremely difficult on snow-covered peaks. The posters, which were prepared in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean, were put up at Sanroku Station.
“We hope people will use location information apps and other means to ensure they don’t get into trouble in the first place,” Tsushima said.
Avalanches are another danger on Aomori’s snowy mountains. In January, a group of foreign tourists who were backcountry skiing on Mt. Iwaki got caught in an avalanche. Nine members of the group were briefly stranded.
In February 2021, a woman who was off-piste skiing in the Hakkoda Mountains died after being struck by an avalanche.
Some organizations and ski resorts are stepping up efforts to prevent skiers from getting in a predicament on the mountains. Nakamura Nouen, an Aomori City-based business that arranges backcountry tours in the Hakkoda Mountains, requires all tour participants to carry a beacon.
In January 2024, Aomori Spring Resort in the town of Ajigasawa introduced the Cocoheli helicopter search service operated by Authentic Japan Co. The resort lends any skiers going off-piste a small Cocoheli transmitter for a fee.
According to Fukuoka-based Authentic Japan, a transmitter buried under 70 centimeters of snow can be detected by a helicopter one kilometer away, and 140 meters away when under 1.8 meters of snow.
“We urge all people heading out on the mountains to carry transmitters to help searchers looking for them, so they can be quickly found,” an Authentic Japan spokesperson said.