Posted on Mar 24, 2018
59 4
NW
Posted on Mar 24, 2018
59 4
NW
3km

Distance

1 hours

Time

60m

Ascent

720m

Highest point

3/10
Difficulty
Snow Icon | Hokkaido Wilds
Jan-Apr

Best season

Shikaribetsu Gorge (然別峡), nestled into the southeastern foothills of the Daisetsu National Park in central Hokkaido, is home to a number of natural, wild hot spring onsen (see them all here). In winter, the only way to get to them is on skis or snowshoes. The furthest (and most impressive) hot spring from the trailhead is Chinika-no-yu (チニカの湯). Even still, it is only 30 minutes along a snow-bound forestry road. Good camping options abound in the area, so this makes for a unique overnight Hokkaido ski touring experience.

Last updated Apr 2, 2021

Route Map

Need to know details

Location

This ski tour route starts in front of the closed gate (here) about 50m before the Shikaribetsu Kanno-no-yu Onsen carpark, in the northern reaches of Shikaoi Town in central Hokkaido, about 200km east of Sapporo city.

General notes

This route is all about camping next to wild onsen hot springs in the winter in Hokkaido. Distances are short, so make it a good solid few days of outdoor relaxation.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Wild Onsen Guide here >>

Hut
None
Route details

There are no route markers, but you’ll be following snowed-in roads mainly. There are some signs (in Japanese) pointing to Shika-no-yu at the far end of the Shikaribetsu Campground. There are no signs indicating the location of Chinika-no-yu though, so be prepared to do some searching along the river below the dam.

Route Timing
Up | .5hrs
Down | .5hrs

About 30 minutes from closed gate to Chinika-no-yu, the same on the return.

Transport

Public transport:

There is no public transport to the trailhead (location).

By car:

It is possible to park in front of the closed gate in front of the snowed-in road that leads to the campground (location). Be prepared to clear some space in the snow bank though – about 15 minutes of digging may be required. Some Japanese blog posts I’ve seen mention parking in the Shikaribetsu Kanno Onsen carpark, but when we attempted to do that a staff member asked us to move on.

Physical maps
Official Topo Map: 然別湖 (Shikaribetsu-ko) – map no. NK-54-2-13-3

NOTE: The official 1/25000 topo map(s) above can be purchased for 350yen from Kinokuniya bookstore next to Sapporo Station or online (in Japanese).

Aspect
The main aspect skiers are exposed to on the descent and/or ascent is Northwest. Therefore, keep an eye on the weather forecast a few days ahead of your trip to monitor wind, snow, and temperature. Also, since this route is in the general vicinity of the Furano area, consider looking at the Furano Avalanche Center (on Facebook). They issue sporadic observations throughout the season which may give extra insight into avalanche conditions.

Snow and
route safety

Police notification: Fill your police notification out online using Compass – instructions here

Shikaribetsu Gorge Hot Springs Camping Difficulty Rating

Category

Grade

Points

Strenuousness

Vertical Gain

D

25

Time ascending

D

0

Technicality

Altitude

C

3

Hazards

D

0

Navigation

D

0

Totals

28/100

GRADES range from A (very difficult) to D (easy).  More details here. Rating rubric adapted from Hokkaido Yukiyama Guidebook 北海道雪山ガイド.

Weather forecast

Windy.com weather forecast for Shikaribetsu Gorge
Onsen nearby

The whole area is littered with wild onsen. Take a look at my rundown on the options on this separate post here.

Extra Resources
No extra English resources that we know of. If you know of any, please let us know in the comments.

Guide Options

If you’d like to ski this route and/or explore other peaks in central Hokkaido together with a local certified guide, get in touch with Yasuko Kikuchi. Born and raised in Hokkaido, she’s a JMGA-certified guide now based in Sapporo. Her outdoor experience is broad and worldwide, having worked as a Canadian Ski Patrol member, and has sumitted a number of 6,000m+ peaks around the world. She speaks good English, and can arrange transport to and from central Hokkaido. In addition to Yasuko, also see a full list of English-speaking Hokkaido Mountain Guides Association (HMGA) guides on the HMGA website here

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Show Full Route Notes Close Route Notes

Route Trip Notes

This trip to the Shikaribetsu Gorge area was part of a four-day ski tour mission to eastern Hokkaido. The main focus was to check out the Mt. Musa hut (route guide) and Mt. Nishibetsu hut (route guide), but on the way back to Sapporo I added in one night camping next to a wild onsen at Shikaribetsu Gorge. The area is a veritible treasure-trove of wild onsen options – see them all here.

We arrived at the Shikaribetsu Gorge Kanno Onsen carpark at around 4pm, after driving almost 5 hours from Shibecha Town further east. We were just getting ready to leave the car when a staff member from the Kanno Onsen asked us not to park our car in their carpark. They seems somewhat fed up with people leaving their cars there overnight to visit the wild onsen beyond the campground. Fair enough.

So we moved the car to just in front of the closed gate that leads to the campground.

Despite it only being an overnight trip, and only having to ski about 15 minutes to our campspot, we were carrying plenty of gear. To be fair, much of the extra was food, and the two Swedish torches – for a nice contained campfire – added to the bulk.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

My original plan had been to ski the 30 minutes to Chinika-no-yu and set up camp there. But it was getting late, so we decided to just ski the 10 minutes or so to the Shikaribetsu Gorge Campground and camp next to the Shika-no-yu hotspring. Ah the luxury of having multiple wild hotspring options in one area!

From the closed gate it was a downhill ski along the road before turning off to the left and crossing a bridge to the campground. There was a well-trodden snowshoe track that veered to the right – that is notto the campground – so we figured the Chinika-no-yu hotspring must be the more popular one.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

I’d only pitched my new pyramid style tent (a Hyperlite Mountain Gear Ultamid 4) once before, so it took some time to get it nice and taut. Once it was set up and we’d fashioned some tables and fire-pit, we felt well ready for the night ahead.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

Before dinner we also did some pool cleaning. The Shika-no-yu pool had bugs floating on the surface, and plenty of slimy algae around the edges. Nothing 15 minutes of work with our collapsible shovels didn’t fix though.

Remember, this was after at least five months of probably no cleaning over winter – this onsen is only officially maintained during the non-snow season.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

For cooking and heat tonight, we had bought a couple of Swedish torches from a firewood specialist factory in Ashoro Town (Marusho Tech, location). It was never the plan to end up with Swedish torches. On the way to Shikaribetsu Gorge in the car, I did a Google search for ‘firewood’ in our particular location at the time, and Marusho Tech appeared. I called them and they said they had a camping set, consisting of split wood and some firestarters. The idea was just to buy that and have a normal campfire.

At their showroom, however, they had a few Swedish torches on show, so we went for those – less mess and a better surface to cook on. They charged 2,000yen for the large one that burned for about 2.5 hours.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

Had I known that I’d be cooking on a Swedish torch, I would have though up something more exciting than spaghetti. Hiro of course had a trick up his sleeve – fresh shrimp deep-fried in garlic olive oil, Spanish ahijo style. It was dark before we went for our hot spring soak. Star-gazing while soaking in a hotspring.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
I slept like a log that night. Hiro complained of a cold draft – we hadn’t plugged up the gaps around the inside of the tent very well.
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

We agreed that a warm soak in a hotpsring before breakfast was preferable to sitting in the cold, so we donned our ski gear and set out towards the onsen area below the dam, about 20 minutes upstream. To do this, we had to go back the way we had come, out of the campground, and back along the road next to the river.

There were deer everywhere. Sign of deer. Two dead deer carcasses that were now nothing but carpets of fur.

Half way to the dam, I noticed a large open shelter next to the road. I noted this away as a great spot to camp in the future. No need for a winter tent if you pitch it in there. In fact, no need for a tent at all.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

The first hot spring we found was the one just below the dam – the Damushita-no-yu. It was green and slimy, and I was sure there were more hot springs closer to the riverside.

A quick look further downstream and we hit gold. The larger Chinika-no-yu I’d seen on the Internet was full of sand, but the Gakeshita-no-yu and Menoka-no-yu were clean and clear of any sand and debris. They were both mostly empty – perhaps someone had scrubbed them recently? I plugged the upper Menoka-no-yu with the wooden plug, and added a length of hose to the outlet of the Gakeshita-no-yu, and they started to fill up.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
While they were filling, we walked up and over a bluff, to the hot water waterfall we spotted about 75m downstream. Later I would learn that there was once a hot pool here too. It was obviously also damaged during the 2017 typhoon.
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

In the 30 minutes or so that had passed since I plugged the outlets to the two hot pools, they’d risen by about 10cm. The Gakeshita-no-yu’s outlet was already about 40cm above the bottom of the pool, so there was plenty of water in there for a soak. Once we were in the pool, we noticed that there was a cave in the side of the hill where the hot water was coming out from. Just the right size for a person to sit inside and enjoy a natural sauna.

The river was just a couple of meters away, so we both plucked up the courage to take dips there to cool off.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Cave sauna at Chinika-no-yu (Shikaribetsu Gorge, Hokkaido, Japan)

It was incredible that the pools were just the right temperature (perhaps about 39 to 41 degrees).

After an hour or so we headed back to the campsite for breakfast. Cooking was again courtesy of the smaller of the two Swedish torches we bought in Ashoro Town.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

Hiro had made up some bread dough the night before, so I introduced him to an old pastime I enjoyed as a kid in New Zealand – damper (or camp bread). Bread dough wrapped around a stick and baked by the heat of the embers.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

By now it was close to lunchtime. We had just started to pack up when we decided it made more sense to take it easy and have lunch here, rather than on the road somewhere. It was, after all, glorious spring weather. Blue skies!

I had to resort to using my gas stove for the first time in four days – previously (on night 1 and night 2) we’d been able to use either a hut’s wood stove top for cooking or the Swedish torches.

As we were having lunch, two chaps on snowshoes walked past, for a soak in the Shika-no-yu.

Unfortunately, we had to wrench ourselves away from this paradise-like spot and drive back to Sapporo. Overall, this four-day fact-finding mission was a resounding success, and we’d discovered at least two spots – Nishibetsu Hut (route guide) and here at Shikaribetsu Gorge – that would be well worth visiting again in the colder, snowier winter months.

Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)
Shikaribetsu Gorge Onsen winter ski camping (Hokkaido, Japan)

Comments | Queries | Reports

Done this route to Shikaribetsu Gorge, or others nearby? Thinking of doing it? Please post any feedback, reports, or queries here. Thanks!

4 thoughts on “Shikaribetsu Gorge Hot Springs Camping”

  1. Hi,
    thank you for your sharing
    I like it so much, I plan to go camping with my son at the end of December.
    Can I ask some questions?

    I am troubled by my traffic now, I don’t have a car.
    I started from Sapporo, but I can’t find too much information about public transportation or connecting vehicles on the Internet.

    When I go there at Christmas time, how many temperature sleeping bags should I carry?

    1. Hi Jia, thanks for the question. Have you camped in the snow before? Please be advised that from mid-November until April, this area is a serious winter environment. At Christmas, the campground will be officially closed, and there will be a lot of very deep snow. To get to the campground, you’ll need to have snowshoes. You’ll need a good four-season mountaineering tent – if it snows, your tent will need to be able to handle at least 50cm of snow overnight, sometimes more. You’ll also need a good four-season sleeping bag and very warm sleeping mat – temperatures may be as low as -15deg C, with lots of wind. If you do choose to visit, I hope you are well prepared and enjoy the experience. As mentioned in the post there is no public transport to the campground or anywhere near it.

  2. Thanks for the beta! My girlfriend and I checked these out on our trip through Hokkaido by camper van. We only went to the springs by the camp ground – Chinika-no-yu I think. Pools had plenty of green algae, but were clean otherwise. The two pools that drained into the big pool were slightly warmer and just hot enough for a good soak. The big pool was a little cool. We parked in the onsen’s lot and did not encounter any issues. Anyway, thought I’d say thanks and provide another account of conditions.

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Shikaribetsu Gorge Hot Springs Camping Difficulty Rating

Category

Grade

Points

Strenuousness

Vertical Gain

D

25

Time ascending

D

0

Technicality

Altitude

C

3

Hazards

D

0

Navigation

D

0

Totals

28/100

GRADES range from A (very difficult) to D (easy). Hazards include exposure to avalanche and fall risk. More details here. Rating rubric adapted from Hokkaido Yukiyama Guidebook 北海道雪山ガイド.