Places & destinations
JapanPlaces & destinations
Tateyama-Kurobe alpine route
Thirty-seven kilometres of cables, tunnels and trolleybuses to cross the Japanese Alps without a car.
On the mapToyama
Opened in 1971, the route links Toyama to Ōmachi in Nagano through six modes of transport, none of them private cars: mountain railway, funicular, ropeway and an electric trolleybus under the pass. It peaks at 2,450 metres on the Murodō plateau, where wind off the Sea of Japan piles up as much as twenty metres of snow. The cleared Yuki no Ōtani corridor, open from April to June, is walked between two white walls. The Kurobe dam, finished in 1963 at the cost of 171 lives, closes the route.