Live camera
Mount Gassan from Haguro live camera — Tsuruoka, Yamagata
One of the three Dewa mountains seen from the plain. The broad, gentle body of the mountain often keeps streaks of snow into summer.
Sample August 2026What you are looking at
A distant view from the plain of one of the Three Mountains of Dewa. Its body is gentle, and streaks of snow often stay on it into summer.
The mountain is rounded because runny lava flowed out wide and piled up, again and again. At 1,984 metres it is a substantial height, yet nothing about it is sharp and the ridgelines are gentle everywhere. Those gentle faces hold snow for a long time, so white streaks remain on the slopes well past spring — it is known as a place where you can ski in summer.
This mountain is the centre of the Dewa Sanzan faith, with the main shrine of Gassan Jinja at the summit. Haguro, where the camera stands, is the entrance to the pilgrim route round the three mountains, and a five-storey pagoda — a National Treasure — stands beside the stone steps under the cedars. The summit shrine opens only in summer, so July to September, with snow still lying, is the season for the pilgrimage.
The Three Mountains of Dewa are worshipped as a set of three. Haguro stands for the present, Gassan for the past and Yudono for the future, and walking them in that order has long been held to be a journey of rebirth. The mountain in this frame, then, is the middle of that route. The ski ground on its slopes opens in April and runs until the snow goes in July — it is known as the place you can ski latest in the year anywhere in Japan.
The average date of first snow is 20 October. The variation from year to year is large, though, and can run to a month, because what settles it is not whether snow fell but whether the summit was visible that day.
Mornings are best. From autumn into winter cloud builds before noon, so a distant camera has the mountain only early. Updates come once an hour.
About this camera
| Place | Tsuruoka, Yamagata |
| Format | Still, hourly |
| Time zone | Asia/Tokyo (UTC+9) |
| Category | Nature |
| Operator | Ministry of the Environment — Internet Nature Institute |
| Terms of use | PDL 1.0 |
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