The waterfall I passed by early on in the hike.
Shortly after spooking the deer, this mountain ahead and the ridgeline to the right of the picture I would navigate on the way to the hut for the night.Sunset. Bad news for yours truly.
At the time the sunset I had already navigated that ridgeline. I had another crest to conquer before reaching the hut.
Accommodation. Check it out, kotatsu, and my gear. The gear is also pretty light as you can tell. I was trying to keep the weight down. This is the morning of the second day at about 5 am
Out the door, a nice view of the hut at dawn.
0.2 km? Really? It's that close? What a joke...
Summit of Kumotori-san, 2018m, mmmmmm Fuji.
Kung Fu, cause, you know, I used to do it.
And one final view from the top before it was time to get out of there.
The emergency hut at the top of the mountain.
You know, the one problem with Fuji is it's very difficult to shoot anything else without making it part of the centerpiece...
Fighting a war in the South Pacific would have sucked.
This doesn't look like it, but it's a view straight down the trail...you can't faintly see the switchbacks in the foreground. This is nearing the end of the hike.
Ah, the small mountain town of Oku-Tama. Nice to be out and back in civilization.Annual Encounter
Week 51
Well, back to the grind again. Fortunately it was a very short week back from holiday. Golden Week ensured that it was only a three day week to get back into the habit of things, which I adjusted to no problem. It also meant I didn’t have very much time to plan a very big event (in my mind). The weekend of the 10th and 11th would mark my first multi-day hike and entirely solo no less. Kayoko was kind enough to set up my accommodation at a mountain hut for the night and so, after a short week, I was up and ready to hike on Sunday at the crack of…10.
So…that’s not good.
The mountain I was climbing that day was Kumotori-san, the tallest mountain in Tokyo prefecture, but only just. It sits right on the border of Saitama, the prefecture that begins immediately north of Tokyo and runs further into the mountains. Unfortunately, I didn’t spend very much time examining the outline of the hike in my guide book before heading out. I’d thought the trailhead was only a couple of hours out from Koganei. It turned out to be closer to 4. Not only that, but bad connections resulted in an even longer trip to the mountain than I expected. There was an extra bus ride and train trip involved...
After previous experiences I had promised myself to avoid starting a hike late enough in the day that darkness would ever be a concern. Unfortunately I violated this tenant at the beginning of this hike. Having hit the trailhead at a little past two PM, I started out on the hike anyways. It began nicely enough, crossing a bridge over an extremely deep river valley. I was too rushed to snap a photo though.
A short hike up the slope saw me arriving at…a construction site.
There was supposed to be a cable car there that would cut out 1100 vertical meters of the ascent. This was a serious problem, as I was already far behind my original schedule and now was definitely not going to make it in time for my 6 PM dinner deadline.
Fuck.
So, being foolish and bull-headed, I started trudging up the mountain to get to Mitsu-mine-jinja where the more horizontal portion of the hike begins. Let me just also state that the first sign I passed on the trail was one warning about kuma (bears), so I was put on edge pretty early.
I passed by a beautiful waterfall low on the trail and shortly afterward, while traversing across a fold in the ridge, startled a few deer that dashed off quickly into the undergrowth.
By the time I achieved the ridgeline I’d already drank all of my water and was panting with the exertion. It wasn’t a hard climb but it was extremely warm and humid for early May. Also, as I would later learn in the South Alps, having a hydration bladder leads to much better water conservation.
Anyways, I still had a good few hours of hiking ahead of me, so quickly buying a couple more bottles of water at a hut, I soldiered on across a pretty level and well defined path.
Things went well at first. The first hour or so was quite easy and level, so I was lulled into a false sense of security. It wasn’t until I had the first of the two rugged rises that the path would climb over that I realized I’d perhaps bitten off more than I could chew. It really didn’t help that my concern about the 6 PM deadline had lead me to forget about pacing myself.
Having summited the first of the two peaks I would attain before walking down into the col that held my hut for the night, I noticed that the sun was now only about 20 minutes away from setting which spelt really bad news for me. After snapping the last two pictures of the dusk I pushed on through the woods, wary of the approaching gloom that signalled night. Before long I’d lost enough light that I could no longer see properly and had to breakout my headlamp that I carry with me at all times. It was around this time too that I noticed my right knee start to hurt. I have a tendency to favour my right leg when stepping up, so I figured that I just put more strain on that one. It had been a while since I’d been out hiking anyways, the one in Malaysia having been not too difficult. Guess I was a bit out of shape.
The second rise conquered, I headed down towards the place I’d be staying, Kumotori-sanso. At this point, walking along with my improvised walking stick in the pitch dark, I was getting kind of nervous. The path certainly wasn’t very precarious, but I was tired and worried about running into some forest denizens that might be unfriendly. I’d spooked a number of dear on the way from the first to the second rise, which was initially surprising then quite impressive as I watched them bound lightly up extremely steep pitches. But, with my iPod on in one ear and singing out loud I kept on plugging forward.
That was until I looked to my left about 10 meters into the woods and saw two eyes illuminated in my headlamp light.
Needless to say, that scared the shit out of me. I froze initially then yelled “Hey” loudly. Whatever it was that was looking at me quickly ran about 3 meters to the right and stopped, looking at me again. I yelled again and it moved a little more before stopping to gaze at me again. At this point I decided it was time to book it. So, moving slowly away while facing the eyes, I pushed on ahead through the woods. After moving out of sight I started to walk faster, casting frequent gazes behind me to make sure I wasn’t being followed.
Whatever it was, it didn’t follow me. My guess is it was either a tanooki or a monkey. I think it was probably too small to be a bear and didn’t sound big enough to boot, unless it was rather young. Regardless, this encounter dissuaded me of ever risking a late departure for a hike again. Going through woods like that is scary as hell at night.
My encounter with the unknown life form occurred about 10 minutes before I reached my hut. 8:30 PM, fully two and a half hours late. After sitting and resting I ran into one of the hut owners. She set me up for the night in a private room that looked like it was ready to sleep about 10 people but just held me and a kotatsu for that night. The hut was very well appointed and comfortable, although I wasn’t yet used to the routine of mountain huts.
At 9 PM it was lights out, whether you wanted to go to bed or not. I wasn’t quite sleepy yet since I had made the fool’s mistake of staying up until 3 AM the night before. My sleeping schedule wasn’t adjusted enough to permit me to fall asleep easily so instead I read a bunch of my William Gibson novel by headlamp light.
Soon though, it was bed time. I slept poorly and intermittently.
The lights snapped on and the intercom rang out an alarm at 4:30 AM.
Awesome.
I wake up, still exhausted from the ordeal the night before, pack up my gear, and stumble to the dining room for a Japanese style breakfast. For the uninitiated, that would be fish, rice, a raw egg to go on the rice, as well as some pickles, natto (if you want it) and, of course, tea and miso soup. Doesn’t sound great from a Canadian point of view, but I got pretty fond of this fare in my later adventures.
After belting down breakfast (I missed dinner the night before) I brushed my teeth, bought some water at 500 yen a bottle, and headed out.
The actual climb to the summit of Kumotori was a huge anti-climax. It was a very gentle, short walk up to the top, as it was only 20 minutes from the door of the hut. Woo… Even then, at 2018 meters, Kumotori-san was the highest mountain I’d been on since Fuji in the August previous. I spent a little while hanging around at the top striking kung-fu poses and looking at a snow covered Fuji off in the distance before packing up and heading down.
I must say, the rest of the day was fairly unremarkable. It was just a long, slow 8 hour walk down to the end of the hike in Oku-tama, the same place I’d hiked out to a few months early when I went for my hike at Mitake-san. It was nice enough walking through those woods, enjoying the few views I had of Fuji before the really thick forest closed in.
I saw a bunch of birds on the way down, including a little black capped chickadee-like bird that followed me from tree branch to tree branch for five minutes. That was pretty endearing.
But yeah, there really wasn’t much to report from that hike out. Just a long slow walk. I was out of the woods and back in civilization by 2 pm, having begun the journey out at 5:30 AM or so. Long hike.
And that was it! This hike was sort of a celebration for me. It marked the one year anniversary of me arriving in Japan, the day of my landing in Narita having been May 10th, 2008. And what a year it’s been! I had a second celebration the next week, but that’s for the next blog.
Remaining scared of the dark…
Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello
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