Nikko’s 1,445-Step Sky Corridor: Our Snowy Family Visit to Kirifuri

Our visit to Kirifuri Highland began with a recommendation from someone we knew and a video that caught my attention. Both led to the same place: the long staircase known as the Sky Corridor. When Uta and I finally went, snow covered much of the route.

This account comes from our family journal published on January 6, 2023. It describes a particular winter outing, with clear skies and little wind. The conditions in our video should not be taken as a picture of what visitors will find on another day or in another season.

Where is the Sky Corridor?

Kirifuri Highland is in the Nikko area of Japan. Its staircase offers a very different setting from a city walk: a climb up an open hillside, with the view expanding as you gain height. Tobu Railway's English introduction identifies the Sky Corridor observatory as the destination reached by climbing 1,445 steps from the resthouse.

For us, the attraction was the climb itself. A friend had visited in summer, and I had also seen the stairs in a video about a Nikko trail-running event. I wanted to see the place with Uta rather than only through a screen.

Snow changed the staircase

Before going, I looked at winter videos and recent walking reports. They showed enough snow that we brought chain spikes for our footwear. That was part of our preparation for this visit, not a claim that one item of equipment makes the route suitable in all winter conditions.

At the bottom, some wooden steps were still visible, although snow covered part of them. I had expected to see markers at intervals of 100 steps, but they were hidden. Within about five minutes of climbing, almost all the steps ahead were covered.

My original account records reaching a shelter before the steeper section after about ten minutes. The climb beyond took another nineteen, making roughly twenty-nine minutes in total. That is simply our elapsed time on the day, not a target or a suggested walking time for families.

The view was the reward

Turning around made the height of the climb apparent. On that clear, relatively calm day, looking back over the landscape was the part that made me glad we had come. What had looked like a long sequence of steps from below became a much wider scene from higher up.

The return was a different task from the ascent. The snow-covered slope needed attention, and I used the handrail on the steep section. Our video records what we did that day; it is a family memory rather than an instruction to copy our movements on a snowy staircase.

Another side of our family’s time outdoors

We finished wanting to see Kirifuri in summer too. Seeing a place under snow had made us curious about how different it would look with the steps and hillside exposed.

For current site information, consult the Kirifuri Highland website before planning a visit. Our other English accounts include climbing Mount Fuji together via the Fujinomiya route and a parent–child trail race, each describing its own setting and conditions.

Adapted from our original Japanese family account, first published 2023-01-06. Event details and results describe that visit.