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Home > > December 2026/January 2027 > Whoa, Snow!
A road of tight switchbacks winds up a deep snow-covered mountainside dotted with dark conifers

It can take workers three months to plow this road in the Japanese Alps. Some of the mountains get up to 1,500 inches of snowfall per year.

The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images

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NCSS: People, Places, and Environments 

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Whoa, Snow!

These towering walls of snow draw flurries of tourists to the Japanese Alps every year. 

Jim McMahon/Mapman®

What if it were your job to shovel this snow? Every winter, Mother Nature dumps huge amounts of snow on this mountainous region in central Japan. The snowstorms bury much of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, a scenic roadway that winds 23 miles through the Japanese Alps.

In February, as the snowfall starts to taper off, bulldozer operators begin the treacherous, monthslong work of plowing the curvy road. A fleet of bulldozers and snowplows push hundreds of inches of snow to either side of the route. Before long, the roadway is lined by huge walls of snow stretching up to 65 feet high!

©Nakornampan | Dreamstime.com

Tourists snap photos in the Tateyama Snow Corridor in the Japanese Alps. The corridor's walls can be about as tall as a five-story building.

Workers then block off a quarter-mile section of the route, called the Tateyama Snow Corridor. This allows tourists to walk between the giant walls and snap dazzling photos. About 1 million people visit the corridor each year from mid-April until June, when the snow finally melts.

Bulldozer operator Seto Susumu has been plowing the roadway for the past 40 years. There’s often so much snow on the ground that he has to use GPS just to locate the roadway. And sometimes GPS doesn’t work in remote areas, so he has to go by instinct.

Still, Susumu loves working in the mountains—and the snow. “The open views are beautiful,” he told reporters. “You can’t beat nature.”

—Brooke Ross

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