Japan Travel: Sounkyo Onsen Hiking tour Largest national park Hokkaido11
Japan Travel: Sounkyo Onsen Hiking tour Largest national park Hokkaido11
Daisetsuzan (大雪山) is Hokkaido's largest national park. It is a paradise for outdoor lovers, hikers, brown bears and deer. It is the first place in Japan to see autumn colors and snow each year.
Sounkyo (層雲峡) is a popular hot spring resort town in the north of Daisetsuzan National Park. It is located in a scenic narrow gorge that is flanked by 100 meter high, forested cliffs. There are a pleasant village center, onsen baths and two beautiful waterfalls in Sounkyo. Sounkyo is also a good base for hiking tours into the national park with ropeway access to nearby Mount Kurodake. Sounkyo offers autumn leaf viewing, and one of the first places in Japan to see the seasonal spectacle. The colors typically start to appear around the summit of Mount Kurodake in mid September and then gradually move down the mountain slopes.
Onsen Sounkyo offers some hot spring baths to soak in, including one public bath house, the Kurodake no Yu, located in the town center. This bath house has gender-segregated indoor and outdoor baths with limited views of the surrounding landscape. More hot spring bathing is available at the town's many ryokan. Several of them open their baths to non-staying guests during daytime for an admission fee of typically around 1000 yen.
Kurodake Ropeway The Kurodake Ropeway provides visitors easy access into the higher parts of Daisetsuzan National Park, which departs from next to the Sounkyo Visitor Center in the back of the village center. At the top of the ropeway is a chair lift, which brings you to within a one hour hike of the summit of Mount Kurodake. The traditional 1-2 day tour for advanced hikers continues from the summit of Kurodake through the wild interior of the national park to the summit of Asahidake, from where one can descend to Asahidake Onsen.
Access Information There are seven direct buses per day from Asahikawa Station to Sounkyo (110 minutes, 2100 yen one way). Otherwise, you can ride a JR train to Kamikawa Station (40 minutes, around 2000 yen by limited express train or 70 minutes, 1070 yen by local train from Asahikawa) and catch a bus from there (30 minutes, 870 yen, 11 buses per day). Some ryokan in Sounkyo provide a free shuttle bus for staying guests from Asahikawa or Sapporo.
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