Mt. Nyohō

Mount Nyohō (女峰山, Nyohō-san) is a mountain in Japan located in Nikkō, on the island of Honshū, north of the Tokyo metropolitan area. This 2,483-metre (8,146 ft) stratovolcano is part of the Nikkō Mountains volcanic complex in Nikkō National Park. It emerged from the floor of Japan's volcanic arc about 560,000 years ago, when the formation of the Nikkō Mountains began, and ceased all volcanic activity 86,000 years ago. The Nyohō volcano has been the object of Shinto worship since time immemorial, and in the 7th century, in connection with the nearby Mount Nantai, it also became a sacred mountain of Buddhism by the will of the Buddhist monk Shōdō Shōnin, a mountain ascetic and propagator of the Buddha's teachings in the ancient province of Shimotsuke. The clerics of Futarasan jinja, a World Heritage Site, maintain it as a place of pilgrimage.

The development of Japanese mountain exploration as a sport and leisure activity, initiated in the late nineteenth century by Westerners and continued by the Japanese after World War II, brings large numbers of hikers in all seasons along the hiking trails that stretch along its slopes, and in the river valley that, as an extension of the collapsed slope of its crater, extends to downtown Nikkō.