Tsuta Seven Ponds Trail was added to Your Favorites!
Towada-Hachimantai NP, Aomori
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
These ponds occupy a landscape remade when Mt. Akakura’s eastern flank collapsed sometime 100,000–15,000 years ago, spreading as much as 300 million m³ of debris. What triggered it remains unknown.
The famous red “autumn leaves” at Tsuta-numa aren’t mostly red leaves: dawn light turns the beech-and-oak forest red, then still water mirrors the glow for a few minutes. It doesn’t happen every morning.
A local account links Moon Pond’s name to poet Ōmachi Keigetsu’s nighttime drinking parties there; he was said to love seeing the moon reflected on its surface.
Aka-numa, the seventh pond, is off the six-pond loop. Its recorded water clarity is 18.2 m—the same as its maximum depth—so the measurement reaches the pond’s bottom.
In June, branches over Hyo-tan Pond can carry foamy egg masses of the forest green tree frog. Unlike most frogspawn, these are laid above the water; when the eggs hatch, tadpoles drop into the pond.
The trail guide identifies Suga-numa and Kagami-numa as artificial ponds. Kagami was made by channeling water from spring-fed Tsuki-numa, adding a human touch to this woodland chain.
In June, listen near Hyo-tan and Suga ponds for the ruddy kingfisher, a long-distance migrant from far south. Aomori classifies this striking bird as Vulnerable, Category II.
This beech forest was partly renewed by local livelihoods: grazing livestock kept sasa undergrowth low, while selective cutting for firewood and charcoal let light reach seedlings. This management continued into the 1960s.
Hyo-tan Pond really did once resemble a gourd. Fallen plants and sediment have made it shallower and smaller, so it is gradually changing from open water into wetland and then dry land.
Moon Pond’s only water source is a spring beneath it. Its underground flow passes under Kagami and Tsuta ponds, then surfaces between Moon and Mirror ponds; the steady inflow makes Moon the clearest of the six.
On Hyo-tan Pond’s north shore, a Japanese horse chestnut stands 22 m tall with a trunk girth of 5.92 m. Its age is estimated at about 300 years, and it remains vigorous despite a hollow in its trunk.
Near the trailhead, a 23 m Mizunara oak stands behind poet Ōmachi Keigetsu’s grave like a guardian. Its trunk girth is 5.18 m, and its estimated age is about 400 years.
Rangers have found signs of flying squirrels feeding in the beech canopy: the animals snap off twigs to eat the winter buds, leaving small branches scattered on the forest floor.
During a 2011 patrol, a ranger found a live catfish beneath fallen wood on Long Pond’s bank. The pond has no stream flowing into it and shrinks after snowmelt; how the fish got there remained a mystery.
Tsuta means ivy. The forest’s name may come from vines that spread into sunny openings after trees were cut and climbed toward the canopy—an unexpectedly literal name for a woodland.
