Lake Toro Omiwatari Ice Ridge was added to Your Favorites!
Kushiro Shitsugen NP, Hokkaido
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Omiwatari evokes a “god’s path,” but the ridge is made by ice: temperature swings make the frozen lake expand, crack, and buckle into a raised, winding seam.
The frozen lake has a soundtrack: park rangers have heard deep, drumlike booms roll across it, mixed with sharp cracks as the ice shifts. The ridge can announce itself before it catches your eye.
In winter 2019, Lake Toro’s ice ridge reached about 1 m high—a small frozen rampart, not just a hairline crack. The park’s eco-museum staff documented the imposing formation.
The ridge has no single fixed route: a park ranger reported about 3 formation spots, and the park’s 2026 winter bulletin recorded 2 separate ridges—one near the campground, another near the lake’s center.
The same frozen lake is a workplace: Lake Toro’s wakasagi season begins in January, then local fishers collect eggs for spring hatchery work. Small fish become soy-simmered tsukudani; larger ones are sold fresh.
Toro Kotan’s Ainu community held an early-September Pekanpe-kamuy-nomi for the water-caltrop harvest, thanking kamuy and praying for safe gathering before paddling out for nuts. A 1958 film captured the ceremony.
More than 20 km inland today, Lake Toro is freshwater but began as a remnant of the ancient sea. A shrimplike mysid called kuro-isaza-ami still lives here—a tiny survivor of that marine past.
The ridge can be buried before winter ends: in 2024, heavy snow and strong winds left Toro’s raised ice low and hard to see, with only its winding outline remaining visible.
