A Walk Through a Snow Corridor at Tateyama-Kurobe
The Japanese Alpine Route: An intro
The Japan Alps is a series of mountain ranges in Japan which bisect the main island of Honshu. Nestled at the bases of the majestic peaks of the Japan Alps are seven fascinating cities, such as Nagano (which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1998) and Toyama. Each city is blessed with its own top-class sightseeing spots, making for a truly memorable vacation in the magnificent natural surroundings of Central Japan. It surely is a hiker’s delight!
The Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route is a unique and spectacular route through the Northern Japan Alps which is traversed by various means of transportation including cable-cars, trolley buses and a ropeway. The main attractions of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route are (1) the scenically spectacular Kurobe dam and (2) the majestic snow corridor whose snow walls reach up to 20 m high.
How to reach there:
There are two ways of travelling the route: (1) Tateyama to Ogisawa; and (2) Ogisawa to Tateyama. We took the latter, majorly due to the following reasons:
1. There are more “attractions” in this direction (from Ogisawa to Mt. Tateyama) which we wanted to enjoy while being fresh and energetic,
2. We couldn’t have returned that night itself, and Toyama city (end point of the route) has more hotel options.
The route:
Here is the route-map. As mentioned above, we took the Ogisawa to Tateyama route (in the map below, its right to left)
Tip: For live status of the route, please check the official website (don’t worry, it’s in English ;-P ).
There are various ways of reaching either Ogisawa or Tateyama.
The train and bus network of Japan is awesome enough to help you reach any tourist place very easy.
Step 1: Shinano Omachi
There are different routes to reach the Shinano Omachi station. Since we were going from the western part of Japan, we went through Osaka.
Traveler Tip: If you are travelling with big-backpacks, you can use the “Baggage Delivery Service” in the Shinano Omachi station to get it delivered directly to the Toyama train station (where the Alpine Route ends). It’s really a must-do, as travelling with big backpacks on the Alpine Route would be really uncomfortable.
Step 2: Ogizawa
The bus ride from Shinano-Omachi to Ogizawa took 40–45 minutes. At the Ogizawa station, we headed over to the ticket office and bought the Alpine Route tickets, which was 9490 JPY. Its from here the Alpine route journey begins, with the first mode of transport being a cute trolley-bus!! The trolley-bus ride was pretty cool, and took us through a 6 km tunnel up to the giant Kurobe-dam in roughly 15 minutes.
Step 3: Kurobe Dam
The Kurobe Dam is Japan’s tallest (186 m) as well as highest dam, and a pretty impressive sight!
From the trolley-bus station, we climbed the 220 steps up to the Observation Desk. Once on top, we were rewarded with some absolutely spectacular views over the dam and its surroundings! All the steps were totally worth it!
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to see the water discharge. But, as ‘legends say’, it is possible to see a large rainbow on clear days when the plumes of mist created by a powerful discharge of 10 tons of water per second, making it one of the dam’s principle attractions.
Step 4: Kurobeko
When we were done admiring the view from the Observation Deck, we walked on the pathway across the dam (took about 15 minutes) to the Kurobeko cable car station on the other side of the dam.
Here we jumped on the underground cable car (yet another mode of transport), which took us to Kurobe-daira (5 minutes).
Step 5: Kurobe-daira
Stepping out of the cable car, we were hit by the cool, fresh and snowy mountain air. It was extremely refreshing to breathe in the air while enjoying the breathtaking mountain scenery all around us.
Step 6: Daikanbo
Next we took the Tateyama Ropeway, which took us 500 m further up, to the Daikanbo. (“daikanbo” in japanese means the peak from where you have the best view). The Ropeway took 7 minutes, and the views were spectacular!
Step 7: Murodo
After a short break and a sit-down at the Daikanbo observation deck, mainly for posing and photos, we boarded another trolley bus. This time it was a tunneling-one through Mt. Tateyama for 4 km to Murodo. And “whoosh”, after 10 minutes on the trolley bus we were all of a sudden on the other side of the 3015 m high Mt. Tateyama.
Murodo is the highest point on the Alpine Route, unless you are climbing the Mt Tateyama by foot. Standing at 2450 meters above sea level, Murodo is completely inaccessible in winter due to the heavy snowfall. In mid-April, a road is cut through the snow, creating snow walls that can be as high as 20 meters.
In 2015, the snow corridor was open to pedestrians from April 15 to June 22 (from 10 am to 3 pm) along a few hundred meter long stretch of road, allowing up-close views of the walls. The highest point of the wall was reported to be 13 meters on the opening day, which is actually lower than the average (18 m) due to below-average snowfall during the previous winter.
Since we were lost enjoying the breathtaking views at the Kurobe dam and the Daikanbo, we reached the snow corridor section only at 2:30 pm. Initially although we were a little sad because we got only 20–30 mins to enjoy this majestic thing, but then one of the security personnel informed that there is another snow wall: “the mini snow corridor” where we can go and “play” without any time limitations!! Yippieee!
Step 8: Bijodaira
After our hike to Mikurigaike Lake (a.k.a. Murodo Lake), we continued the trek down with a bus to Bijodaira. The bus ride took about 50 minutes, through green and lush forest with huge cedar trees.
Step 9: Toyama City
The last stage of the Alpine Route is with the cable car down from Bijodaira to Tateyama, which takes 7 minutes. We didn’t spend any time in Tateyama, only waited for the train. You can choose to end your Alpine Route journey here, if you want to sleep in Tateyama (but there are not many options here). From Tateyama we took the train to Toyama (1 hour). We reached Toyama at approximately 7 p.m.
Coming here made me appreciate the Japanese’s capacity for making everything so organized, ONCE AGAIN. You can see that there has been plenty of meticulous thought put into creating this route, Esp. the Snow Corridor. In the efforts to preserve the natural resources found in this area, there are no outside cars allowed except for those operated directly by the company maintaining Kurobe Dam. In addition, the coordination in between the various modes of transportation in this route is just awesome. Hats off to the Japanese discipline(once again)!
Mainak Biswas is an Engineer/Inventor by profession and a traveler-n-photographer at heart. He’s lived in Japan for 4 years and during that time he traveled extensively across the country (covered 38 out of 47 prefectures of Japan, including many many uncommon places and climbed Mt Fuji too).
Apart from Japan, he has explored Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and of course his homeland India!
To learn more about his travel escapades, follow his blog Dynamic Equilibrium. You can also connect with him on Facebook and Instagram.
