Take the Sounkyo Ropeway up the mountain and you'll be rewarded by the beautiful views. After reaching the top, take a short walk and you'll be able to take another ropeway (the same type as those taken at a ski resort) and you'll be rewarded with more beautiful views of the mountains.

Read that this place is one of the 1st places in Japan to view autumn leaves, but I was a little early for the autumn leaves and only saw a few trees with beautiful red and orange hues. Would like to return one day to see it in its full glory.

We visited late August. Wild flowers have already bloomed and leaves have not change color but it was still beautiful and lush everywhere. Our hiking trip started with the ropeway up from Kurodake, crossed Mt Hokkai and Summited Mt Asahi, the tallest mountain in Hokkaido. Then we took the ropeway down from Asahi. The entire trip took about 7 hrs. It was a long route but we wanted to see more of the national park. We were very lucky with the weather. it does get chilly at the top and wind picks up so make sure to bring layers. There are two active volcanos. It was very cool to see and hear the vents.

Maybe the only true wilderness in Japan, but beware of all the dangers inside the park. Weather is unpredictable and fast-changing, and this is bear territory. We crossed from Asahi-dake to Sōunkyō. It took us 5 hours and a half. We started at 12.30 from the top of Asahidake Ropeway and arrived just before 6 PM at the Kurodake hut. We had a pretty good pace with quite heavy backpacks (around 14 kg), and quite a lot of pictures stops as it’s really beautiful everywhere. That’s the time given by the map the rangers can show you before you start. You have to be quite physically fit to do this day hike and confident to cross a bear territory. I really wouldn’t advise to hike there in bad weather. I checked a lot the weather forecasts the previous days to be sure we could go. You can check some live webcams of Asahi-dake.

We talked to rangers in the tourist information center of Sōunkyō after the end of our hike, and we were told that they found 2 dead bodies in the previous 2 weeks, maybe eaten by bears after they were lost… If we had known that fact before, I’m not sure we would have done it. It’s better to be at least 2 people in this park I think. We were told that the bears can be anywhere inside the park.

We only encountered 3 people after the summit of Asahi-dake, it’s really wild. The wind was very strong and never stopped, even if it was a beautiful day. We wouldn’t have crossed in rainy weather anyway, it would have been too dangerous. You are exposed all the time, you don’t have any shelter for hours. We slept in the Kurodake hut. Short and difficult night as we slept on the wood floor without mattress. It’s cold in the night but we had really good sleeping bags (-6° comfort so we didn’t feel it at all).

The landscape is amazing, it reminded me of Landmannalaugar in Iceland! We hiked July 6th 2017, and there was still a lot of snow. The end of the track was really difficult to find because of the snow, we had a GPS and an offline map hopefully (Gaia app on Android, I don’t hike without it anymore now, it’s more than helpful), otherwise it would have been much harder to find the hut. The way down the next morning from Kurodake hut to Sōunkyō was really snowy. A llttle dangerous without crampons, we didn’t had any we were really slow and careful with our steps.

In the end, an amazing hike, my favorite in all of Japan!