In Which I Claw My Way To The Top Of The World

This will be a little out of order, but I had an amazing weekend and it's quite bloggable, so I thought I'd get to it first. Also, there are tons of pretty pictures below, many blown up to obnoxious size.

Last year, I climbed two of the three holiest mountains in Japan--Fujisan and Hakusan. I only had one left on my list, Tateyama. I also wanted to climb the mountain that lies beyond Tateyama, Tsurugidake. Tsurugidake is a much less accessible mountain and can be quite dangerous at times. I took Friday off from work and headed to Toyama Prefecture at 7:30 in the morning.

Let's enjoying hiking and mountain climbing!

(I know that joke might not come across back home. Because of a transliteration, a common mistake Japanese people make is saying "let's enjoying" or "let's playing music"...)

The route to the base of the Tateyama range is train to cable car (or funicular!) to 50-minute bus. This means that the climb to Tateyama is the shortest of the three holy mountains, although it's still a 600-meter elevation gain.

In the winter the bus route is popular because the road is carved between sometimes 20-meter snow walls. You can see the remnants of those above. Remember, this is July 1st.

My plan was to summit Tateyama, then continue on into the mountain range to one of the mountain huts further in, then try for Tsurugidake on Saturday. Here are some pictures from the first leg of the trip. I started hiking at 12:30 and reached the top at about 2:30.

As you can see, fog was an issue that first day. In the picture above, I'm standing at the highest point in the Japanese Alps. On the one hand, this meant there were no great views, but on the other hand it lent an ethereal, mysterious air to everything. Add to that the fact that there were only a couple other hikers because of the foggy/rainy weather and it really felt like I was removed from the rest of the world.

The shrine at the top of Tateyama, Oyama Shrine, is actually quite large, and as I sat and rested a priest came out to invite me in to pray. He told me to stand in a particular place and proceeded to beat a drum, pray, and clap his hands. He instructed me to do the same at certain points. He was completely solemn and focused on his work, and the simplicity and rich tradition of what he was doing, especially considering the location, was deeply moving to me. The drum echoed lightly into the fog and he finished by giving me a small sip of sake from a saucer. I really appreciated that he didn't treat me like a tourist or a foreigner, but just as a person who had made this trek to a traditionally holy place (no matter how aided by trains and buses).

My lunch, complete with Tateyama brand nihonshu (sake). I'm sure I'm the first person to have brought Tateyama sake to the top of Tateyama....

I continued on from Tateyama, often walking across long rocky ridges to work deeper into the mountain range. The fog continued to obscure most of the huge views that would otherwise be there, but lent their own exciting air to everything.

Looking back at Oyama Shrine.

A ptarmigan, posing for me on a cairn. I saw several of these guys, calmly living live on high mountain ridges. They didn't seem too bothered by my presence, and this one let me get especially close.

Around 5:00, I descended to one of the mountain huts. I was hoping to continue on for another hour and get as close to Tsurugidake as possible, but the lone staff member told me that the other huts required reservations and it was too late to call ahead (these huts are more like lodges, powered by diesel generators and supplied by helicopters--making calling ahead otherwise a possibility).

So I stopped for the night at the Gozen Goya hut. I was doing this hike a little early in the season, to which the huge snowfields below the hut could attest. I was the only guest at Gozen Goya that night, and the man, Hideki, urged me to be cautious about climbing Tsurugidake. He thought it might still be too snowy to do the climb without crampons or pick-axes. I was disappointed, but figured I would go slow and see how far I could get.

I crashed in my room for a nap, and woke up to see the fog had cleared and I had just missed a spectacular sunset. Hideki said he came by and knocked lightly on my door, but I was unresponsive. Drat drat drat.

View of Tsurugidake from my window.

Hideki made some delicious Nepalese soup and we talked for a while before turning in. I set my alarm for 4 AM because I sure didn't want to miss this sunrise.

4:30 AM

View of Oyama Shrine from far away at sunrise. It's that little tip.

My guesthouse below. My window was there on the sunny corner.

Not wanting to waste time and with a huge day of hiking and climbing ahead of me, I set off at 5:30. My first obstacle was the snowfields in between me and Tsurugi.

I used something called Yaktrax to enhance the grip on my boots, and that turned out to be indispensible--I otherwise would have probably been sliding around all day, and that gets dangerous on the steeper parts.

After about an hour I made it to the base of Tsurugi and started clambering up the grassy start of it. Soon, though, I took off the Yaktrax for good because everything turned to rocks.

Spot the ptarmigan!

We're not in Colorado anymore, Toto.

Those are the snowfields I crossed in the morning. My hut is up and to the right behind the ridge.

I had the good fortune to be hiking in great weather on helicopter supply day, so as I rose up above I looked down and saw the helicopters circling in with nets full of food and gas.

See it?

Tsurugi would be unclimbable by non-mountaineers if it wasn't for a series of chains and metal ladders placed into the side of the mountain. Though only meant for assistance, I used sailing knots to make a rope harness to clip in to the chains so that I'd have a little more confidence going up.

There were only two other parties on Tsurugi that day, both groups of three. One was a group of young guys from Nagano who were coming down as I was going up and reassured me that I'd be able to get up without crampons or a pick-axe. The other group is pictured below, and they were fully decked out in winter climbing gear. They were descending by a much more difficult route--I think they may have been taking a mountaineering lesson, judging by the body language.

The biggest danger, which Hideki pointed out to me, was rockslides. As the snow melts the rocks tend to shift and sometimes can fall. I tried to take my time and scope out each section of the trail so I could protect myself as much as possible if things started sliding. Luckily, I didn't have any problems. The dicey-est parts of the climb were down below on the lower ascending snowfields.

Getting close...

Nothing like a shrine built on top of the "most difficult climbable mountain in Japan" to make you feel inadequate. Stunning.

I thought of this as more a gesture of "Yeah, badass, I made it!", but I realized as I walked back to my camera that I had just thrown up devil horns in front of a sacred Japanese shrine. Let's just chalk this one up to cultural insensitivity and move on....

I spent a half an hour or so on the summit, eating a mid-morning snack and using the natural refrigerator on the top of the mountain to chill a locally brewed bock beer. Papa and Ari, this one's for you:

I saw fog and clouds starting to roll in from afar, so I decided to head down. The chains were a huge help on the descent.

Mountain vegetables just beginning to sprout. You can get these fried in tempura in a lot of restaurants.

I made it down to the lower valley without too much trouble, aside from an unnecessarily thrilling/terrifying 7 seconds or so that resulted from a moderately stupid route decision and were solved by a thin bamboo stick. I'd rather not have a permanent record of me being foolish, so if you want details on that one you'll have to ask.

The fog made the return up the snowfields pretty difficult, and at times I was almost whited out. Being early in the climbing season, there wasn't a good route tracked out so I got turned around several times. Eventually I found my way, though, and ran across an older Japanese man who was staying in my same hut that night.

Finally out of the fog, almost home.

I returned at about 2 PM and spent most of the afternoon unwinding and watching the fog whistle by the ridge. There were several extra Japanese staff on hand because of the helicopter resupply day, and I spent a long time talking and eating with them. The fog never cleared to give me back the sunset I missed, and it hung around for the morning as well, making my second 4 AM wakeup call unnecessary.

I trekked back out early on Sunday morning and made it down to the base area by 8 AM.

Down at the bottom I took a side trail and suddenly walked into Mordor.

It's easy to forget that all these mountains are volcanic, and that results in hot spring areas. These are used to fuel bathhouses and resorts, but you're able to walk through the sulfur and gases on a couple paths.

Not the best breathing to be had around there....

Back to where I began.

It was a truly special weekend. I was able to leave all my worries and preparations for leaving Japan back in the lowlands and clear my head up in the clouds. The isolation, space, and striking beauty are things I will remember for a long time. I'm very grateful for the way that trains and buses make it so easy for a car-less, half-Japanese speaking layabout like me to get up and experience different facets of this country.

Tradition, meditation, heavy exertion, warm welcome, cultural exchange, awe-inspiring beauty, and just a bit of danger to spice it up. Not bad for a three-day weekend.

And the train beer on the ride home.