Updated for Java Edition 26.3 (October 2026).
Snowy slopes is a treeless mountain biome of steep snow-covered hillsides, sitting below the jagged and frozen peaks. It is where you find goats, goat horns and natural powder snow, plus igloos and pillager outposts. In our sample of 300 Java 26.3 seeds it covered 0.31% of the surface, but every seed had some within 5,000 blocks.
| Dimension | Overworld |
|---|---|
| Where it generates | The sides of tall mountains, between plains or snowy plains below and the peaks above |
| How common | 0.31% of the surface in our sample (about 1 block in 320); present in all 300 seeds |
| Distance from spawn | Median 1,561 blocks; within 1,000 blocks in 29% of seeds, within 2,000 in 69%, within 5,000 in all 300 (our sample) |
| Mobs | Goats and white rabbits, plus the usual hostile mobs at night |
| Notable blocks | Snow blocks and layers, powder snow, stone, emerald ore, infested stone; no trees |
| Structures | Igloos, pillager outposts, ruined portals, mineshafts, trial chambers; no villages |
| Climate | Temperature -0.3, downfall 0.9; it snows, never rains |
| Biome ID | minecraft:snowy_slopes |
| Added in | Java Edition 1.18 (Caves & Cliffs: Part II, 2021) |
How to find snowy slopes
Find a snowy mountain and climb. In our sample, the edge of a snowy slopes area touched plains 25% of the time, snowy plains 20%, jagged peaks 14%, frozen peaks 13% and grove 8%. So from flat plains or snowy plains, walk toward the white mountains on the horizon: the bare, snow-white hillside below the summit is snowy slopes, and the spiky or icy tops above it are the peaks. If you walk into spruce trees on the way up, you are in a grove instead.
These three Java 26.3 seeds put snowy slopes close to spawn. Each coordinate is inside the biome, checked at block level.
| Seed | Snowy slopes at | From spawn | Map |
|---|---|---|---|
3183428924759873340 |
X -42, Z 86 | 75 blocks | Open on the map |
-3950753048479612946 |
X -26, Z 70 | 75 blocks | Open on the map |
80984023920391331 |
X 110, Z 126 | 167 blocks | Open on the map |
With cheats on, /locate biome minecraft:snowy_slopes gives the nearest one, or paste your seed into the biome finder. These are Java seeds; the same number on Bedrock gives a different world.
Is snowy slopes a mountain biome?
Yes. It is one of the mountain biomes added in Java 1.18, and the game groups it with meadows, cherry groves and the jagged, frozen and stony peaks. That grouping is why pillager outposts and mountain-style ruined portals can generate here. It is the middle layer of a snowy mountain: lower ground below, peaks above.
| Feature | Snowy slopes | Grove | Jagged peaks | Frozen peaks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trees | None | Spruce | None | None |
| Animals | Goats, rabbits | Wolves, foxes, rabbits | Goats | Goats |
| Igloos | Yes | No | No | No |
| How common (our sample) | 0.31% of the surface | 0.53% | 0.14% | 0.14% |
| Median distance from spawn (our sample) | 1,561 blocks | 1,343 blocks | 1,658 blocks | 1,675 blocks |
Powder snow
Powder snow generates in patches on snowy slopes and looks almost the same as normal snow. Step on it and you sink in; stay inside and you start to freeze, then take damage. Wear leather boots and you can walk on top of it, and wearing any piece of leather armor stops the freezing. You can scoop powder snow up with an empty bucket and place it again elsewhere, which makes it useful for traps. Climbing these slopes without leather boots is the most common way to get stuck.
Goats and goat horns
Goats spawn here in small groups, and on jagged and frozen peaks. They jump high and sometimes ram players and other mobs, which on a steep slope can knock you off a ledge. A few are screaming goats, which make screaming sounds and ram more often.
When a goat rams a solid block such as stone, a log, packed ice or an ore block, it can drop a goat horn, up to two per goat. There are eight horn sounds, four from normal goats and four from screaming goats. Pillager outpost chests can also hold a goat horn, and outposts can generate on snowy slopes. You can also milk a goat with a bucket and breed goats with wheat.
Other things on the slopes
There is little food: rabbits and goats are the only animals, and there are no trees, so bring wood. Emerald ore and infested stone (which hides silverfish) generate in the stone, as in the other mountain biomes. Igloos sit on the flatter snowy parts; some have a hidden basement with a brewing stand and a chest.
What changed in 2025-26
In Spring to Life (Java 1.21.5, March 2025), snowy slopes was listed as a cold biome for the new farm animal variants, so a pig, cow or chicken spawned here (with a spawn egg, for example) comes out as the cold variant. They don’t spawn here naturally. Nothing else official changed for this biome in 2025-26.
Source: the official 1.21.5 release notes.
How we measured
The numbers on this page come from our own seed map engine, running Java Edition 26.3 world generation. We generated 300 random seeds and sampled every 16th block across a 10,240 by 10,240 block square centered on each world’s spawn. “How common” is the biome’s share of those samples; “distance from spawn” is how far the nearest sample of the biome was. The seeds above were picked from the same run, and each coordinate was re-checked at block level.
