Lake Nukabira Ice Mushrooms was added to Your Favorites!
Daisetsuzan NP, Hokkaido
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These “mushrooms” are not ice growing from wood: after the lake freezes, hydropower releases lower the water, leaving slabs of lake ice perched on stumps from the forest cleared when Nukabira Dam was built.
Mushroom ice needs a particular mix: severe cold, little snowfall and a gradual drop in water level. Local guides describe Nukabira as the only place in Japan where this combination is known to create it.
These formations can creak and crack as the ice shifts around the stumps. At peak, more than 100 may appear, and J-POWER notes that different ice thicknesses make different sounds.
The largest mushroom ice can stand about 1 m tall, with stump bases tens of centimeters across—a strikingly oversized mushroom shape made from lake ice left behind as the water falls.
A local innkeeper notes that the same stump can grow a cap in one year but not another. Changing water levels and the way the ice breaks also give each winter’s mushrooms different shapes.
Look through a cap toward the light and it can appear blue. A local nature-guide representative also notes that the mushrooms’ shapes seem to change with your viewing angle.
A 2019 local report says fishermen already knew the ice mushrooms before they became a draw for visitors; a news-agency story about 20 years earlier helped bring them wider attention.
