Kurobe Unazuki Canyon Route to connect with the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route from this autumn
The Kurobe Dam, Japan's tallest dam, was built during the 1950s and 60s in the steep and narrow Kurobe Gorge, deep in the Japan Alps, in one of Japan's greatest feats of engineering.
Since 1971, the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route has allowed tourists to visit the dam and travel along the tunnels and cable cars built through the challenging terrain in order to construct and maintain the dam. Likewise, tourists have been able to travel along the narrow-gauge Kurobe Gorge Railway since 1951 to see the beautiful nature along the train line, which continues to also serves the maintenance of multiple power stations in the gorge.
But despite the proximity of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route to the Kurobe Gorge Railway, travelers have not been able to easily combine the two into a single trip, because the routes are accessed from completely different directions, and the direct link between them has been off-limits to the public until now.
However, this will change in autumn 2024, when the missing link, the Kurobe Unazuki Canyon Route, will open to the public and allow tourists to travel along the impressive, mostly underground infrastructure, which connects the Tateyama Alpine Route with the Kurobe Gorge Railway and was previously not open to the public.
Like the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, the Kurobe Unazuki Canyon Route is divided into multiple sections to be traveled by various unique means of transportation, including an elevator, battery-powered mini train, an underground cable car and a tunnel bus in a thrilling journey, which takes about three hours between Keyakidaira Station and Kurobe Dam:
The Kurobe Unazuki Canyon Route starts at Keyakidaira Station, the terminal station of the Kurobe Gorge Railway. The spectacular narrow-gauge railway line with its small trains has been open to tourists from Unazuki Onsen to Keyakidaira for many decades, but it also continues to serve the maintenance of the power plants and related infrastructure along the gorge.
Electric train
The first section of the Kurobe Unazuki Canyon Route is just a few hundred meters long and leads with one of the electrified trains of the Kurobe Gorge Railway into the tunnel behind Keyakidaira Station.
Underground elevator
Building a railway for the next section of the journey towards Kurobe Dam would have been an excessive effort due to the elevation gain involved. Instead, the engineers opted for an elevator, which lifts passengers (and small, single rail cars) 200 meters up the mountain's interior.
Battery-powered train
The next 30 minutes are spent on board of one of the tiny passenger cars of a battery-powered train, which rushes through the tunnel and gives passengers the feeling of being miners commuting to work. Along the way, the temperature inside the tunnel raises to 40 degrees at one point, reminding travelers that the construction of these tunnels was extremely challenging. A quick stop-over is made at Senindani Station, which is located on a covered bridge, offering views into the surrounding landscape - a rare moment along the trip to see the daylight.
Kurobe No. 4 Power Station
A stop is made at the Kurobe No. 4 Power Station, which is fed by the waters of the Kurobe Dam and was built entirely underground to preserve the natural landscape and protect the plant from avalanches. Travelers are able to view the plant's large central hall with its four turbines.
Underground Cable Car
An underground cable car (in Japanese called "incline" rather than "cable car" because it was primarily built for transporting goods rather than people) lifts travelers a further 450 meters during a slow, 20 minute journey.
Tunnel Bus
The final 40 minutes are spent with a bus ride through a tunnel plus a stop-over halfway along the way to walk through a side tunnel to a nearby viewpoint with views over the Japan Alps, including one of Japan's few ice fields that have been recognized as glaciers.
Because of capacity and safety issues, the Kurobe-Unazuki Canyon Route will unfortunately not be open for free exploration by individual tourists. Instead, it will be necessary to sign up for a travel package, which includes accommodation in addition to a guided trip along the route. Four different plans (see map below) are expected to be available at costs that have not been announced yet, but are expected to be around 130,000 yen per person:
From Unazuki to Tateyama with an overnight stay at Unazuki at the start of the trip
From Unazuki to Tateyama with an overnight stay at Murodo along the way
From Tateyama to Unazuki with an overnight stay at Unazuki at the end of the trip
From Omachi to Unazuki with an overnight stay at Omachi at the start of the trip
The route was originally scheduled to open from June 30, 2024, and the travel plans were planned to go on sale from this January; however, because one bridge along the Kurobe Gorge Railway was damaged by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, the opening of the route was delayed to October 1, 2024, and the travel plans won't go on sale until around early July.
Only a few thousand tourists will be able to pass the route per year; consequently, it can be expected that competition for the travel plans will be quite high.
