Mt.Tsubakuro One Day Trekking

Mount Tsubakuro (Tsubakuro-dake, 燕岳) is a 2,763 metre high mountain in Nagano Prefecture, Japan.



When we arrived at Nakabusa-onsen (Nakabusa spa, 中房温泉), thousand number of stars blighted whole over the sky!!! There was the Milky Way!!! Unfortunately, we don't have a skill to take a picture of stars and the Milky Way. It's a simple surprise that it can be seen the Milky Way from Japan, where is covered by the city lights in the night. It was because Nakabusa-onsen is located in the mountain area and far away from the nearest city.

Next morning, we started into the mountain trail at 7 o'clock, due to over slept... We knew it takes from 8 to 9 hours to make a round trip. Therefore, we thought that we should have to wake up at 5 and start 6 o'clock at least. Emmmm.... but, we seemed to be tired...

Anyway, we departed the start point of a trail up to a Mt. Tsubakuro,1462m high, Nakabusa-onsen.

Whole picture of a map and elevation graph are follows:

Approximately 2 km of walk, we arrived at one of the rest stations, Fujimi-bench, where you can see the Mt. Fuji showing its top from the cloud.

There is a mountain lodge named Kassen-goya on the middle of the trail.

Kassen-goya (Kassen Hut) is very famous for serving a cut of water melon. They sell the 1/8 cut of water melon by 700 yen. We ate this water melon on the back way to Nakabou-onsen after we reached the top of Mt. Tsubakuro, but usually, hikers eat this water melon on their way to the top for the hydration.

After leaving Kassen-goya (Kassen Hut), the trail became steep. Soon after that, Mt. Yari (Yarigatake in Japanese) suddenly appeared on our left. Mt. Yari is one of the famous and popular mountain in Japan, maybe the second famous followed by Mt. Fuji.

At 2712m, very close to the summit of Mt. Tsubakuro, there is a hut, Enzanso (Enzan Hut, 燕山荘). We haven't know that there is a dolphin like rock called "dolphin rock" around the hut

We can leave our main backpacks at the front of the hut, and we attack the summit with minimum equipments.

We pass the glass like rock called "megane (a glass in Japanese) iwa".

After 4 and half hours departed from the bottom of the trail, we reached the top of Mt. Tsubakuro. The small rock in the picture is the mark of the summit.

Ridge lines were very beautiful.

In the highland area, clustered Komakusa (English name: Dicentra peregrina) were fully blooming.

Total time of this trekking was just 8 hours and it's a regulation duration.



Way to the Nakabusa Onsen:
 Nakabusa Onsen (only available in Japanese)