Trekking in Yari–Hotaka Ridge

The Daikiretto is the great gap in the ridge between Yari and Hotaka, and for many Japanese hikers it is the route they spend years building up to. It is not a rock climb — chains, ladders and metal handholds are bolted into the hardest sections — but it is a knife-edge with the ridge falling away some three hundred metres on either side, and the guidebooks are honest that people die on it.

The crossing itself is short, under two kilometres, and takes only a few hours, but every one of them is spent on loose, exposed ground where a lapse has no margin. It is done in the early morning, before the cloud boils up out of the valleys, and never in rain or wind. Yarigatake, the spire at one end, looks like the Matterhorn and climbs like a ladder.

This is one of Japan's hardest non-roped ridge routes. Come with real scrambling confidence, a helmet, settled weather and an early start — fitness alone will not carry you across.

Snow lingers in the gullies into July. Not a route to attempt in rain or wind.