Happo Pond: a beginner-friendly hike in Hakuba

23 August 2025

Mountain stats

Elevation 2060m

When to climb mid-June - October

Course options 3km out-and-back hike taking 2 hours, or 5km over 3 hours if you skip the final chairlift.

🚌 Public transport access

About 4 hours from Tokyo to the Happo Bus Terminal

🚗 Car access

3.5 - 4hr drive from Tokyo to the Hakuba Happo-One resort

The day before climbing Mt Amakazari, we took a a bit of a detour to visit Hakuba’s Happo Pond, or Happo-Ike. This was a pretty last-minute decision - as we started driving out from Tokyo, I realised we were going to arrive at the campsite pretty early, so started Googling for things to do around the Hakuba area. The Happo Pond popped up - it’s a short 2 - 3 hour hike, and I had seen it a number of times on YAMAP before so it piqued my interest straight away.

To begin your hike up to the pond, you’ll need to take some combination of gondola and/or chairlifts. You have two options:

Using the Adam Gondola and Alpen Quad Lift, known as the “Alpen Line”. This starts down in the town of Hakuba, and can be accessed via public transport.
Driving 8km up the Kurobishi Skyline road, and using its chairlift.

The Kurobishi Skyline is the cheaper option - the round-trip cost is 2,300 yen, compared to the Alpen Line’s 3,400 yen. However the main downside is that after a 30-minute drive up a winding road, you could be faced with an entirely full carpark. At which point I suppose you’d have to wait around hoping for a spot to open up, or make the drive back down to Hakuba. We went on a Friday, so luckily the carpark wasn’t too full and it turned out to be a pretty good option.

As we climb up, you can see the village of Hakuba below.

Taking either of these options, you’ll reach Kurobishi-daira, which sits at an elevation of 1680m. From here there’s one more chair lift you can take - the Grat Quad lift. This one is optional, and if you skip it you’ll need to walk another 20 minutes up hill, but you do save 800 yen round-trip. So we skipped it!

Beyond the final chairlift, you’ll have a 2-hour round trip hike to visit the Happo Pond. The trail is a mixture of boardwalk trails, as well as some more rocky climbs.

There were plenty of people out on the trail, even for a weekday. As well as hiking to the pond, you can also continue on beyond the lake to visit the peak of Mt Karamatsu (唐松岳), and it’s possible to do an overnight hike connecting Happo Pond with the peak of Mt Shirouma-dake, which is one of the Hundred Famous Mountains (which I need to get around to climbing). I would say most people were just doing the lake hike like us though.

That's the lake starting to come into view.

The most iconic photo of Happo Pond is it together with the Hakuba Sanzan (the Hakuba Three Peaks) reflected in the lake.

Even with the mountains half-obscured by clouds, with this view I could really understand the appeal. The mountains really just loom before you - they feel so huge. The lake sits at an elevation of 2060m, which is pretty high up, but the mountains are even higher, maxing out at 2932m at Mt Shirouma-dake.

Some people camping out, probably waiting for the clouds to part.

There’s a fair few types of wildflowers around the lake, including the purple Veronicastrum japonicum (a bit of a mouthful, really), together with the same type of Brenthis daphne butterfly that I spotted earlier.

We didn’t dawdle too much, since we knew we had a bit of a drive to go before we could get to our campsite, so we started back on our descent.

Back at the chairlift, there’s a small store selling some t-shirts and soft serve. Since we saved 1600 yen between the two of us by skipping the chair lift, we joked we could buy 1600 yen worth of ice cream, but restrained ourselves to sharing one (we spent all the money on meat later for a campfire BBQ).

The fog started to roll in as we headed back down.

Taking the chairlift back down to the carpark.

Hiking course

The hike up to Happo Pond is a 3km out-and-back that should take you just under 2 hours, starting at a mountain hut called the Happo-Ike Sanso (八方池山荘). You can see the hike on YAMAP here.

It’s not possible to hike this without using a gondola or a chairlift somewhere, but if you want to save 800 yen, you can skip the final Grat Quad lift, and start from the Kurobishi-daira. Skipping this final chair lift brings the hike up to 5km, and will take an extra hour.

If you want to skip the last chair lift, here's the sign for the trailhead.

There is a toilet at the Happo-Ike Sanso, and then another one probably an hour or so into the hike.

When to hike Happo Pond

The hiking season for Happo Pond is between mid-June and November. Your access will be limited by the operation of the gondola and chair lifts. In 2025:

The Adam gondola ran between June and the beginning of November (schedule here)
The Kurobishi chair lift ran between July and mid-October (schedule here)

The hike is fairly short, but be careful as the lifts stop running sometime around 4pm. It’s recommended that you begin your hike by 1pm to finish in time.

Public transport access

If you’re coming via public transport, you’ll be looking to get to Hakuba station, and then the Happo Bus Terminal. There’s a couple of options:

A direct train from Shinjuku to Hakuba station (3h 40min, 8050 yen) which departs only once a day in the morning
A combination of a Shinkansen to Nagano station, and then local train to Hakuba station (around 11,000 yen)
A 5-hour highway bus from Shinjuku. You can even do this one overnight, and arrive at Hakuba before 6am
You’ll first need to get a Shinkansen to Nagano and then a local train to Hakuba station (3 hours and about 12,000 yen from Tokyo)

Once at Hakuba station, it’s a 5 minute bus ride (or 25 minute walk) to the Hakuba Happo Bus Terminal. From there it’s a further 10 minute walk to the Adam Gondola station.

Car access details

Adam Gondola

If you are coming via the gondola, you’ll be looking to at one of the carparks near the Hakuba Happo-One Snow resort. The three carparks next to the gondola station (parking lot A, B and C) cost 1000 yen. The nearest free carpark is about a 10 minute walk away at the Happo 3rd Parking Lot.

Kurobishi Skyline

The Kurobishi parking lot is about a 30-minute drive from the main gondola carparks. The upside is that it is free, and getting the chair lift from the here is about 1100 cheaper than using the gondola. However it’s a smaller carpark so you might be out of luck if you drive all the way up there and there are no spots (there’s not much space to park on the sides of the road either).

We went on a Friday, and the car park was probably over half full, but there was still a fair few spots left so it turned out to be a pretty good option.

There is a livestream available here if you want to check out the current conditions of the carparks