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Shikotsu-Tōya NP., Hokkaido
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Before Usu’s 1977–78 eruptions carved Gin-numa’s great crater, the ground was pasture, a local hiker told Hokkaido’s official hiking guide. The trail now looks straight into that transformed landscape.
A 1791 record of a climb up Usu with 2 Ainu guides describes their idea of underground fire rising through a vent—an explanation a modern study finds strikingly close to volcanology.
Ainu names for Usu’s summit domes preserve a relative-age lesson: Ko-Usu is Husko-nupuri (“old mountain”), and O-Usu is Asir-nupuri (“new mountain”). The trail’s rim overlooks the volcanic summit landscape.
An 1806 account of nearby Usu Zenkoji says itinerant ascetics were visiting its hall and climbing Usu before 1666. People climbed this volcano for spiritual practice centuries before the modern trail.
A fallen trunk beside the trail has a ranger’s nickname, “Ki-rin-san”: its bent silhouette looks like a giraffe, and a strip of pink trail tape makes it seem to wear a ribbon.
A 2025 ranger patrol recorded 3 kinds of trillium along the wooded trail, including purple Kojima trillium. On Usu, this flower grows on the seaward side, not the Lake Toya-facing northern slope.
The striped inner walls of Gin-numa crater, visible from the trail, are layers of volcanic deposits. Each band helps reveal how repeated eruptions built up Usu’s remarkable landscape.
