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Chubu-Sangaku NP, Nagano
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A snack break here has local favorites: Karasawa Hütte serves its specialty oden on a terrace facing Hotaka, while nearby Karasawa Goya is known for soft-serve ice cream and ohagi rice cakes.
The cirque’s snow can pile more than 20 meters deep—not from snowfall alone. Strong winds blow snow into the valley, and avalanches add even more to the enormous winter accumulation.
When local mountain guides built Karasawa Goya in 1939, they cut timber below Byobu-iwa and carried it on their backs all the way to the cirque. The wood was left to dry before being worked.
An avalanche destroyed Karasawa Hütte’s main building in the winter of 1951. Its replacement was built with stone-filled gabion barriers, and the architect-designed new building was completed in 1963.
A study of autumn snow from 1967 to 2025 found a significant long-term decline of about 947 square meters a year. The researchers linked the trend chiefly to warmer temperatures during the melt season.
To track Karasawa’s snow for 59 years, researchers assembled 106 images and records from 8 kinds of sources—including aerial photos, maps, camera images and pictures owned by individuals.
Karasawa is a glacier-carved cirque about 2 kilometers across, set at roughly 2,300 meters beneath ridges of the Hotaka range. Its steep, rounded walls give the valley its distinctive bowl shape.
Karasawa Goya stands beneath a roughly 50-meter rock wall that helps shield it from avalanches. Its builders also chose a firm rocky foundation, a south-facing slope and a nearby water source.
