MT. Tateyama, one of Japan’s Three Holy Mountains, is not unfamiliar with snow. Mounds of the solid material coat the area. In the winter, traveling along the road that snakes along the mountain is unattainable. Yet each spring, those who do proceed into the winter wonderland are greeted by an astonishing wall of solid snow.
The wall reaches as much as 66 feet high. It hugs the edges of a violently quarter-mile stretch of road; institutes a snow canyon with the footway as its base. It looks like something straight out of Game of Thrones an icy, impervious barrier forged with something greater than human durability.
But this wall wasn’t produced with any sort of icy magic. Every March, fleets of bulldozers begin clearing the snow along the highway. Little by little, the enormous machines shove the snow out of the way. Once they’ve come within six feet or so of disclosing the pavement buried below, teams of workers comportment rotary blowers set to work destroy away the last bits of snow. The final result is a penetrable pathway, carved between two mammoth wintry walls.