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Chubu-Sangaku NP, Nagano / Toyama
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In the mountain’s remote Kakunezato valley, researchers measured an ice body over 40 m thick and about 700 m long. GPS markers showed it moving up to 17 cm in 24 days; in 2018 it was confirmed as Nagano Prefecture’s first glacier.
In 1926, 3 First Higher School students made the first snow-season ascent of Kashimayari’s south summit. After scouting the route the year before, they made a 19-hour round trip, using a snow cave as shelter along the way.
At Kashima, the last hamlet before the mountain trail, climbers once gathered at the inn run by Kikuno Kano, fondly known as “Kashima no Obaba.” Her grandson remembers her hand-made soba and says the inn was famous among mountaineers.
As spring snow melts, locals spot a crane and a lion on Kashimayari’s slopes. The shapes inspired old names for the mountain—Tsurugatake and Shishidake—while its two summits also earned it the name Sekurabe, or “height-comparison” mountain.
Local lore says Heike warriors fleeing the Genji hid in Kakunezato, the remote valley beneath Kashimayari, and that their descendants later settled in Kashima. It is a cherished regional story, not a verified account of the village’s origins.
The rocks around Kakunezato preserve clues to a vast early-Pleistocene caldera volcano, more than 17 km across. Geological fieldwork found fractured granite blocks there, interpreted as material that slid down when the caldera wall collapsed.
Before snowplows, winter snow could cut Kashima children off from their school 10 km away. A local mountain guide recalled that the children would gather and board together at the Shinano Kizaki Summer University building during the snowy months.
Echū records once used Ushirotate for what is now Kashimayari; later, that name came to describe the broader range. Its old reading, Goryuzan, was confused with another peak and helped give nearby Goryu-dake its name.
People in Kashima once worked the mountain forests, stockpiling cut timber before sending it downstream in batches. At Karuma, workers hauled the logs out of the river to sell—a lively piece of the village’s former mountain livelihood.
