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Chubu-Sangaku NP, Nagano / Gifu
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Ice helped carve Daikiretto about 20,000 years ago. A 1952 study proposed an even stranger twist: the Okiretto Cirque may have held 2 small glaciers flowing in opposite directions—one north, one south.
In 1909, Masao Ugodono’s party crossed this ridge toward Mount Yari with guide Kamonji. Ugodono’s journal says even the guide was on unfamiliar ground: they clung to rock and hauled on a rope.
The Daikiretto Cirque floor hides a natural shelter: a geologist documented traces of bivouacs in gaps between huge piled boulders. Ancient ice helped carry and strand those rocks beneath the ridge.
The gentler ground around Minamidake Hut, near Daikiretto’s southern gateway, shelters several families of Japanese rock ptarmigan. Hut staff report seeing parents and chicks feeding on alpine plants there through summer.
Near Daikiretto’s Kitahotaka end, the ridge overlooks Takidani, where cliffs drop hundreds of meters on the Gifu side. Guide Kamonji famously called it a place “birds cannot pass.”
The Geospatial Information Authority records Daikiretto as 大切戸 and defines a kiretto as a sharp ridge cut deeply. Yet its lowest saddle is 2,748m above sea level, between 3,033m Minamidake and 3,106m Kitahotaka.
