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Hidakasanmyaku Erimo Tokachi NP, Hokkaido
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In 2024, solo climber Ryo Nakagawa made a 187-km journey from Mt. Memuro to Cape Erimo in 19 days. In 2026, Shintaro Saito crossed the main Memuro–Rakko ridge in 11 nights, without support or food depots.
This is no maintained long-distance hiking trail: the main ridge has no continuous trail or chain of huts. In snow-free months, reaching many peaks means bushwhacking or traveling up streams; winter snow can link the crest.
Two names tell their own little story: Poroshiri, the range’s 2,052-m high point, means “big mountain” in Ainu; farther south, Pirika-nupuri means “beautiful mountain.”
The Ministry of the Environment traces Hidaka’s mountaineering history to July 1923, when Hokkaido University climber Matsukawa Goro and companions climbed Mt. Memuro—the northern gateway to the main-ridge traverse.
More than 100 glacial landforms—including cirques and moraines—surround the main ridge. One is Mt. Poroshiri’s Seven Ponds Cirque, an Ice Age basin dotted with pools and selected for Japan’s “Geology 100.”
Among the ridge’s rocky cirques lives the Ezo pika, a small relative of rabbits and hares. These boulder fields shelter the species described by the park as a survivor from the Ice Age.
The main ridge’s alpine flower beds have a distinctive cast: the Ministry of the Environment names Hidaka-genge and Hidaka-kinbai-so among the plants that make this range’s alpine flora unlike that of other mountains.
Hidaka’s geology is a collision story: the Kuril and Northeast Japan island arcs met here, thrusting and tilting crustal rocks upward. Some rocks formed deep underground now lie exposed at the surface.
When the national park was designated in 2024, its main ridge—from Kumami-yama to Hiroo-dake—was included in a Special Protection Zone to safeguard its nearly untouched landscapes, alpine plants and wildlife.
