Karasawa Hyutte, new building (涸沢ヒュッテ新館)

The first building of the Karasawa hut was put up in 1951 and collapsed under an avalanche that same winter. Rebuilt the following year, in 1952, it was ringed with gabions meant to withstand the horizontal force of avalanches. The new building was designed in 1959 by Takamasa Yoshizaka with Atelier U (U研究室) and completed in 1963.

A mountaineer, Yoshizaka led the Waseda University expedition that climbed Mount McKinley in Alaska, and he designed many mountain huts. A board member of the Japanese Alpine Club and of the Japanese Society of Snow and Ice, he studied architecture in cold, snowy regions and published scientific papers.

The new building is a timber structure of two storeys above ground, about 23 m long and 18.5 m wide, under a gabled roof clad in sheet metal. It holds the reception, the dining hall and the bedrooms. The dining hall, double-height and wide-spanning, is crossed by truss beams.

The siting responds to snow and avalanches. On the side of Kita-Hotaka-dake (北穂高岳), where most avalanches come from, gabions were laid. On the side of Oku-Hotaka-dake (奥穂高岳) the slope is cut away and the building is half underground, so that the horizontal thrust of avalanches passes it by. During the design a simple hut was built on the site to test the damage done by snow and ice.

In summer a deck set on the roof opens the view onto the Hotaka range (穂高連峰); its elements are also used in the winter cover. That cover, the fruit of long years of experience among the hut's staff, consists of temporary posts carrying vertical loads such as the weight of snow, a temporary enclosure propped against the outer walls, and another laid across the roof to close the gap between the building and the terrain.

Facing the Hotaka range, the hut serves as a mountaineering base and receives many climbers, from children to the elderly. The hut's year runs from spring, when the building is dug out of the snow, to its closing after the season of autumn colours.

Stays are by reservation only; when the hut is full, another date has to be chosen. The panoramic shop, open from 6 am to 5 pm depending on the period, serves food and drink to enjoy on the viewing terrace, which looks out on the Hotaka range. It stands at 2,310 m in the Karasawa cirque, in the Northern Alps, and is reached on foot by the trail that runs from Kamikōchi (上高地) to the Hotaka range.