In search of sunrise

August 9, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Climbing
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I run through the dark, through Mt Mizugaki’s primordial forest. A Freudian nightmare of a pitch black mountain. I’m all alone, and unseen creatures scream and howl in the night. The forest beats a tachycardic rhythm of raindrops as it shakes the last of the rain from its leaves. On and on I run, praying for that first turn of the sky from deep black to dark wine. Suddenly it was upon me, and the dawn reaches for my shoulders and seems to pull me to the summit just as the sun clears the nearby ranges.

I’d come through the nightmare and been reborn here while the mountains gathered to witness the event. Fuji showed her outline briefly before pulling the clouds back around herself, and for a short while the Southern Alps loomed above the plain. The Yatsu-ga-take range maintained its steady watch. The sky was a jagged mess of mares’ tails, the remnants of last night’s storm, with no portent of what was to come.

Mizugaki’s spiritual connections to the region run deep. Early on the people made the obvious connection between the fertility of their rice crop and the proud granite spires that adorn the summit and so rent the clouds. Even in modern times, the mountain has a power and presence that belie its stature.

The mountain holds mysteries too. Under many of the boulders which lie strewn across its face, sticks have been placed as if to prevent the boulder from rolling away. They range from the biggest branches to innumerable twigs. For what end? Who places them? A joke, or something more serious? In the pre-dawn glow they loomed, anthropomorphic figures of decaying matter trying desperately to hold back the inevitable.

But this beautiful day took a dark turn by mid morning. From Mizugaki I decided to climb on to Mt Kinpu. Fast and felt strong I made the final ridge which leads to the summit. Forty minutes, maybe an hour on that exposed ridge. I was ten minutes into it when I saw the thunderheads on Mt Kobushi a few miles away. They were black, except when they ignited for a millisecond to arc out the summit. The flash was blinding; the rending of the air ten seconds later was worse, and they were moving this way. I didn’t need to think. I turned back in a split second.

Off the ridge I tried to outrun the coming storm, crashing ever closer, and ran straight into a team of four who were still moving up. I could scarcely believe what they were doing. Deaf, blind and stupid they continued. I told them the storm was coming up on the ridge fast, and was roundly ignored. I continued to run down. Flash - one, two, three, four, five - boom! Fifteen minutes later the lightning hit Kinpo. Flash - one, two, three - boom! then it hit the ridge repeatedly. Then the storm overtook me in a war of hailstones and turned its attention to Mizugaki.

It sickened me to watch those men go. How wantonly they gambled with their lives. Taking risks when you have some control over the parameters is one thing. Running headlong into obvious danger is another. I hope they came to their senses and turned back. But something tells me they didn’t.

They say zen is a cauldron of boiling oil over a roaring fire. My yoga is a vrksasana tree on a 100 foot column of granite.

Carbohydrate days

August 6, 2008 | Filed Under Hiking, Nutrition, Exercise, Climbing
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The great Snickers famine of 2008 in Japan had me looking round for alternatives. Those 68g bars packed a much needed 350kcal. They weren’t ideal, but they were cheap, plentiful and convenient. When they disappeared from Japan’s shelves in early 2008, I was at a loss.

I researched, spent long nights reading arcane biochemistry texts. I know more about the subject now than I ever wanted to. Ask me anything. The Krebs cycle. The breakdown of aminos into acetly-CoA. Those slippery triglycerides. I am still stunned at what my body does with that Snickers bar. But all this knowledge didn’t help me feed this wonderful machine.

I gave in and bought Power Gel and GU, those 25g sachets of goopy carbs. They did the trick, but at a price - a few hundred yen a time, not to mention the voluminous litter they seemed to produce. There must be a better way. And there is. Make it yourself.

You will need:

Brown rice syrup
Honey
Sea salt
(Powdered coffee - optional)
The patience of a saint

Combine together, roughly 1/3rd honey to 2/3rds brown rice syrup. Both are viscous so getting exactly the right proportions is almost impossible. Get as close as possible. Add about 1 level teaspoon of salt for every 200ml of honey/syrup.

Put the mixture in a pan of hot water, and mix together as it heats. The powdered coffee can also go in at this stage.

Pour the resulting mess into some kind of dispenser, preferably a tube with a cap which will allow you to take mouthfuls while you are on the move. I use empty Weider energy gel packets. This is where you will need patience; pouring the liquid into the tube takes time. It helps to have a funnel.

The result: a bottle of well-balanced, pure carbohydrates. A 25g mouthful will deliver around 100kcal; 2 mouthfuls or so an hour should be enough to keep your blood glucose high enough to keep you moving and allow the body to metabolise its fat reserves. A kilogram of this for a body burning 35% carbs to 65% fats could take you through almost three days at a push (although not exactly recommended..).

The brown rice syrup is around 20% water, 30% complex carbs, 45% maltose (which gets broken down immediately into glucose) and 4% glucose. It also has vitamin B and some other trace minerals found in rice. The complex carbs give a steady background burn, while the glucose gets to work more immediately.

Honey is roughly 30% glucose, 40% fructose, 20% water. Combining glucose and fructose together may lead to more efficient carb burn and quicker takeup by the body; seemingly the pathways by which they are metabolised are different. Honey also has many vitamins and minerals, as well as antioxident and preservative properties. The potential downside may be, ahem, looser stools; not everyone metabolises fructose completely. I’ve never had a problem though.

The sea salt provides essential minerals, and also helps with water retention. The coffee, should you wish to add it, obviously gives you a caffeine hit; not only does it boost attention, but it may also help with the glucose metabolisation process.

So there you have it. For Y1000, well over 1kg of pure carb energy, 100% natural. And rather tasty.

Slain

August 3, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Climbing, Inspiration
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Like newborn horses the stream of climbers reach the summit of Mt Ibuki, slick with sweat and on legs skittery from the short, steep climb. Some forget to stop climbing and continue to lift their feet high over non-existent boulders, so baked are their brains by the August sun. They soon disappear among the crowds of day-trippers who had driven, or been driven in enormous souless tours, to the summit via the road that has been shaved into the back of Ibuki’s head.

This head, and its rocky shoulders, rise dramatically above the fresh green rice fields that surround Lake Biwa to the northwest of Kyoto, much like Mt Buko of Yuka’s home town does over Chichibu. Like Mt Buko, the cement companies have done their best to defile Ibuki, digging deep into its right shoulder. On its tonsured scalp is an untidy mess of cheap souvenir shops, touting for business during the season when the alpine blossoms riot on the mountain. As if to hide its shame, Ibuki pulls a veil of clouds around its peak and refuses to show us the grand views over the Kansai plain which, the guide holding a poster sized photo of the view on a clear day assures us, lie below. Picnickers sit staring into the grey. I snap my usual one-handed summit proof, much the amusement of all present, and run back down the mountain to Kyoto as fast as I can.

The old capital boils in the midsummer. Seeking the cooling breezes of the high ground, we make our way up to Kurodani and give thanks at Konkaikomyo temple for safe passage so far this year. We watch children, limbs glazed by the sun, chase dragonflies and cicadas on the steps of the temple’s great black gate. I’m saddened though to find that the path from Konkaikomyo to the temple at Shinnyodo has been paved. I liked the hot, dusty yellow track that it used to be. Regardless, we follow it up the hill to Shinnyodo, to its pagoda and quiet, mossy gardens.

Yuka writes her journal on the great wooden steps. The heat makes me restless so I walk, stopping only to watch the fish swim through the trees reflected in the pond for a few cooling minutes.

I find myself in the forest of granite obelisks that fill the hot graveyard to the south. As I try to frame a shot of turning maple leaves against the azure sky, I hear a step on the path behind me and whirl around, camera in hand.

“I hope you’re not going to take a photo of me!”, comes a voice, heavy with the lilt of Kyoto. I look down, and I meet the lively eyes of an old lady, stooped double, her white hair scraped into a neat bun. She holds a water bucket in one hand and a ladle in the other; she’s here to tend the grave of a loved one.

I assure her I’m just taking photos of the trees.

“You see, I’m 94 years old. I used to be so beautiful. I was the queen of the festival round here when I was 16… I wouldn’t want people to think I didn’t used to be beautiful… So I don’t let anyone take my photograph these days!”. I felt the fire in her soul cut through her momentary melancholy.

I tell her I think she’s still beautiful. Coquettishly she sweeps a thin hand over her face as she turns away giggling, but flicks her eyes back to me in a sidelong glance at the last moment.

Two daughters of a silk merchant live in Kyoto.
The elder is twenty, the younger, eighteen.
A soldier may kill with his sword.
But these girls slay men with their eyes.

I wish I could have taken her photograph at that moment.

Suddenly she was 16 again.

Apocalypse when?

July 28, 2008 | Filed Under Japan, Inspiration
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A man once told me that you could see Mount Fuji from the Ginza crossroads during the war. All it took was for the B29s to firebomb every intervening building between there and Yokohama. But those twin evils of modern cities, high-rise buildings and pollution, have once again blotted out the mountains which ring the Kanto plain where twenty million Tokyoites eat and sleep, and work.

Once in a while however, the air clears a little and the mountains force their presence back on the city. They start in the south-west with the Tanzawa and Hakone ranges, up to Takao above Hachioji, and then further north to the mountains of Chichibu and Okutama.

Tonight they ringed the city at sundown as a jagged purple line. They brooded, harsh and uneven against the lights and sharp lines of the city. You took something from us, they say. One day, we take it back…

Yuka watches the clouds roll in like the sea. “It’s a sign.” she says.

Mythology

July 22, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Inspiration
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The bells of Daisen temple rang from the valley below, and were answered by the bear-bells that adorned the pack of every climber making their way up the mountain.

“Hard course or easy course?”, I ask Yuka as she comes back to the tent.
“I just threw up. Easy course. I don’t think pretzels make a good breakfast.” she replies. I was impressed she wanted to go at all. We set off, and by the mid-point she was back on form.

We’d come to the Chugoku region to climb its mountains, but it was its villages and valleys that linger on in our minds. In the crumpled folds of Oku-Izumo lie innumerable tiny hamlets, surrounded by fresh green rice paddies and backed by emerald hills. Terracotta pantiled roofs shone in the summer sun, glimmering above freshly whitewashed walls, and nowhere was the slightest thing out of place. We made our way slowly with no fixed plan other than to climb Daisen on this long summer weekend in Japan.

The sounds of a midsummer festival drift up the valley to the meadow where we camp on the first night. Fireworks shake the night, and we watch the smoke drift lazily across the face of the moon as we lie in the cool grass. By the light of the flames shooting from the Kelly kettle we plot our route for the next day. The highest peak between us and Daisen is Mt Sentsu; with vague intentions to climb it we drift to sleep, the sound of the festival drums below drifting through our dreams.

As Takachiho is to Amaterasu, so Izumo is to her brother Susanoo in the mythology of Japan. A rebellious and truculent young god who goes on to redeem himself through great deeds, his is the story of every young man, and is psychologically echoed in Sun Wukong of Chinese legend and the Trickster Coyote of the Native Americans. Izumo shrine is his shrine; we paid our respects there at the start of our journey, and now find ourselves on the morning of the second day wrapped in his lands. A battered sign by the roadside points to the Ryuzuyae Falls (eight-headed dragon falls), bringing to mind the eight-headed serpent Susanoo fought and killed. The water is icy cold, but it is still early in the day and so with great shouts we jump into the pool and feel the waterfall like shrapnel burst upon us.

Deeper still into Oku-Izumo’s valleys we find Oni-no-shitaburui, a canyon choked with boulders, many eerily eroded into gargoyle-like visages spewing and swirling the waters of the river. Picasso never painted so well.

Mt Sentsu is deserted when we arrive in the early afternoon. It’s humid under the trees as we climb the few thousand feet to the top, and we are grateful to arrive on its bald summit and for the breeze which cools us. Susanoo was here too. The sign at the top tells us that he slew that eight-headed serpent on this very mountain. We give thanks at the small shrine on the peak; as I bow, I find myself eye to eye with a snake which peers unblinking from within the cracks of the wall, and then languidly slides away.

As Yuka dances on the summit, swarms of dragonflies fill the air; one lands on her outstretched hand, and for a few minutes they waltz silently before it takes to the skies again.

But they are camera-shy insects, and not one wishes to pose for me, so I reach up try to catch the clouds instead.

We arrive at Daisen, and the next day set off for the summit with the throngs who are also making the best of the weather. Judging from the amount of kit being carried, many if not most are headed on to Everest. We show them our heels, and before long are bracing ourselves in the cloud and wind that whip the top of the mountain.

Yuka and I will have been married ten years this September. Back at the carpark I ask her what she wants to do for our anniversary.

“How about we renew our vows?” she asks.
“Sure. A shrine or temple somewhere?”
“I was thinking just us. At the top of Mt Fuji.”, she smiles.
And, just to make sure I fully remember why I love her, she adds,
“It is outside the climbing season, isn’t it?”

Back in the saddle

July 13, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Climbing
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The short climb up Mt Ryokami did not exorcise the demons. Under the summer canopy the air was humid and still, a warm and comforting bath when what I really wanted to feel was cold and alive. It took a little under two and a half hours to climb the 3,500 feet to the summit, where I gazed out at the explosion of deep green life that the Okutama region had put forth. Fuji hid its head in the cumulus that poured off the Pacific and mighty crashes far off held the promise of thunder storms advancing through the thick summer air. Getting off the summit seemed a wise idea.

Reversing my route would put me back at the Ryokami hut within a couple of hours. A good meal, a visit to the hot-springs, another tick on the Hyakumeizan list.. Instead, turning my face from the sun, I headed north along the ridge towards Higashi-dake and then east along the Temmusho ridge. On the map it is marked as a thin dotted line, copiously adorned with warnings of certain doom for those that wish to travel it. Four hours later as I stood on the summit of Tenri-dake, halfway down, I knew why. The rhododendrons grow thick along its spine, not only making progress painfully slow but also obscuring the edges of the cliffs; on more than one occasion my boot parted their branches and hung over hundreds of feet of air. The undergrowth whipped my legs like a martyr and the sharp granite cut into my hands and arms as I climbed down.

From Tenri the ridge drops away and back towards the hut. The vegetation grows thicker with every metre descended. I decided instead to rapp into the Nagaiya-sawa gorge that leads from the summit, back into the valley below. The cool waters of the gorge washed the blood away from the earlier wounds, and added a few of its own as I skated on the slick stones of its bed. The Nanatakizawa course at the valley floor took me back to the trailhead, where my appearance scared the old woman and even the dogs gave me a wide berth.

I felt better than I had in weeks, and the demons were nowhere to be found. Sometimes you just have to lose a bit of skin to let them out.

Bitter dragons

May 25, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Japan, Inspiration
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At 4a.m. the rain was still pounding like a canon on the roof of Kijitei, the restaurant owned by Yuka’s parents, which nestles in the verdant foothills outside Chichibu. The grey dawn filtered through the paper screens, while the frogs sang in their damp delight outside. I’d planned a fast, light climb up Mt. Ryogami this morning. But the thought of knee-high mud, cold water trickling down my neck, and probably no view at the top had me crawl back under the warm futon instead. There would be other days.

Mt. Ryogami’s black, jagged teeth jut defiantly against the skyline to the west of Chichibu city. These mountains hold gold and other metals; some of the nation’s first-known coinage was found in these parts, and there were commercial mines here until recently. There are hidden villages too, huddled half way up the valleys. One is rumoured to comprise the the direct descendants of the defeated Heike clan, who fled to the hills when the forces of the Minamoto routed them after the battles of the 12th century. The heirlooms of more than one homestead are scraps of faded cloth, said to be the remnants of battle standards and armour over eight hundred years old. The women still filed and blackened their teeth in the manner of the medieval Japanese court until the middle of last century. Life does not change quickly here.

The present name for Mt. Ryogami comprises two characters, “both/two” and “god(s)”, and so it is said to be named for the ancient deities Izanagi and Izanami. But as Fukada points out in his Nihon-Hyakumeizan, there is nothing to suggest a duel or twin nature to the mountain, no double peak or other characteristic. Instead he takes us through the history of its various appellations. Formerly it appears to have been known as Mt. Yokami (eight-day-visible-mountain). Further research suggests that originally the mountain was known as Mt. Ya-okami (eight-headed-dragon mountain), which makes far greater sense. Its serrated edge on a fine day is clearly the spine of some mighty serpent, and on the map one can just trace the eight heads leading from its peak, much as one can trace the five heads of the dragon which lead from Mt. Goryu (five-headed-dragon-mountain) in nearby Nagano.

The rain clears by mid-afternoon, and my mother-in-law continues with my instruction in the tea ceremony. Just as the mountains of Chichibu have shaped and formed the attitudes of this outpost of Tokyo, so the tea ceremony has shaped Japan’s cultural and psychological vocabulary. To be bad or unskilled at something in Japanese is to be “nigate“, literally “bitter-handed”, a word originally describing a tea ceremony neophyte whose concoctions were tanic and undrinkable. We whisk the powdered tea as the late afternoon sun streams through the windows and catches the magnificent ramparts of Mt. Buko, the symbol of Chichibu so cruelly devastated by the excavations of the Onoda Cement Company. Further off Mt. Ryogami is no doubt enjoying a magnificent sunset too. My father-in-law bravely offers to try my first attempt, and brings a cup to his lips.

“Nigate!”

I’m going to stick to climbing mountains.

Closer to heaven

May 19, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Climbing, Inspiration
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Looking around the hut you could tell the ones who had just been to the summit of Yari. They had the burnt-out, shell-shocked look of veterans. Bloodless fingers nervously flicked the ice from the sharp points of their crampons, axes caressed lovingly against their arms. A cigarette crackled and spat in the thin air as its owner sucked it down in one long inhalation.

An hour and a half later I had acquired my own Yari-induced thousand yard stare.

Yari is named after the Japanese for spear. Its pyramidal peak pierces the sky, a lethal black weapon atop the smooth white curves of the glacier which curls away below it. In summer it is a short, if hair-raising, climb from the hut below via two ladders and some fixed chain. In winter all except the top ladder lie below the thick snow and ice which remains plastered to its steep walls. The result is a near seventy-degree climb without protection, and a long fast drop to the glacier ending in a mess of certainly fatal injuries somewhere far below. With this in mind, I dug the axe deep, stabbed into the snow with my free hand to the elbow where I could, and kicked again and again until the crampons hit home to the toe with a reassuringly solid thud.

I flopped onto the summit and lay for a few minutes on my back starring at the sky, lungs bellowing. As the chill hit me I got up, walked slowly to the small shrine which sits at the top and thanked the gods for a safe ascent. The cloud cleared briefly, arraying the Alps before me in every direction. Crouching out of the wind before the shrine, I noticed the coins left by previous climbers as an offering were strangely melted and discoloured. The result, perhaps, of the lightening which strikes this sharp conductor through the summer months?

The climb down took twice the time of the ascent, each step a blind kick into the whiteness below. Reaching the ridge at the foot of the summit, I walked back to the hut on legs turned to jelly. I grabbed a can of cold beer and nursed it, speechless, for a while.

I’d started out from Kamikochi at 8p.m. the day before, walking through the night and the black forest as far as Yoko-o. The full moon shone over my shoulder, lighting the snow capped peaks and throwing my shadow long over the path ahead. The bear bell jangled happily at my hip, and I reveled in the sharpness of my senses, the sound of the river and the scents thrown up in the cold night air. Chesterton’s lament for olfaction lost rang in my head,

The brilliant smell of water,
The brave smell of a stone,
The smell of dew and thunder,
The old bones buried under,
Are things in which they blunder
And err, if left alone.

The wind from winter forests,
The scent of scentless flowers,
The breath of brides’ adorning,
The smell of snare and warning,
The smell of Sunday morning,
God gave to us for ours.

At Yoko-o I rolled out the bivy, climbed in and watched the clouds race across the face of the moon until I fell asleep. Waking a short while later at 2:53, I stuck a cold hand outside to light the stove for breakfast, and searched the horizon for a glimmer of light. Nothing yet, but the sun would be up in an hour. I wanted to hit the glacier as soon as possible before the solar radiation turned it to slush.

By six, I was at the hut at Yari-zawa, chatting with its owner in the early morning sun. “There’s a couple of people camping at the bottom of the glacier, and two couples here at the hut. Should be nice and uncrowded for you today.” he said, sipping his coffee. Another hour later and I found the tents huddled against the stone windbreak, sole patches of colour against an otherwise monotone landscape.

From Yari-zawa, the valley curves around and up to the west and then north to Yari itself. As I climbed, the sun peered out from over the summit of Jounen-dake, lighting up the valley; the thermometer said minus four, but it felt like a convection oven. I pasted on the sunscreen and started up through the snow towards the hut below the summit at a little over 10,000 feet.

Reaching the final steep slope which marks the head of the glacier some five hour later the weather turned. Hard pellets of snow, like grains of pudding rice, fell from the liquorice coloured sky and a cold wind blew from the north. Suddenly my sweat-drenched t-shirt, so nice and cool when the sun was out, started to suck the heat out of me. I dug around in my pack, pulled out my jacket and hunkered in the snow for a few minutes as the soft down warmed my body. The clouds cleared momentarily, and taking a quick bearing on the line of bamboo wands stuck in the snow, I started the ascent to the hut again, still a thousand feet above. At eleven thirty I staggered into its warmth, and prepared myself for the route to the summit.

A thin red line on the horizon the next day mocked the forecast for cloud and rain. Pulling on cold boots and crampons, I grabbed my camera and ran onto the hard ice outside, filling my eyes with the beauty of a clear dawn across the mountains. I wondered to myself if I would ever tire of this sight, of the flickering purples, blues and reds which marked the start of a new day. I can’t ever imagine not wanting to see this. I watched the sun break above the horizon, saw it kiss the peak of Yari and continue to rise into the cloudless sky above. Back in the hut I made a liter of hot chocolate and drank it down as I looked out over the white roof of Japan, and I thought myself the luckiest man alive.

Giant leaps through the sun-softened snow took me back down the glacier, fast and fun. By eight I was back at the Yari-zawa hut. In a few hours I would be at Kamikochi among the day trippers, where people no longer met your eye or said good morning as they passed. I dropped my pack, stripped off my t-shirt and washed in the cold river. The water leapt and fizzed as if it were happy to at last be free of the glacier and on its way to the sea again. What if the water of my body felt the same way? Would it too rejoice when I closed my eyes for the last time? It was a thought at once both terrifying and strangely comforting, and it accompanied me down the trail to the shrine at Hotaka.

The midday bus took me back to Shin-shimashima and by evening was back in Tokyo. My wife opened the door, giggled at the sunburnt vision in front of her. “You smell like you had a good time.” she said.

I certainly did.

Fishing for mountains

May 6, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Climbing, Inspiration
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I saw my soul at nine minutes past six in the morning, as I climbed the ridge between the summits of Nokogiri and Kaikomagatake. It floated like a phantom in the clouds billowing up the north face. It was clearly mine; I waved at it and it waved back. Its elongated arms and legs matched my movements. Like a shadow but surrounded by two, and at times three, perfectly circular rainbows.

It walked with me as I made my slow way through the snow and up the ridge. At close to 10,000 feet the air was getting thin but this was no hallucination. I could see that it too seemed to be carrying a large pack, and I was happy to think that it must love the same things that I do. We walked together for maybe fifteen minutes before I climbed into the clouds that obscured Kaikomagatake’s peak, and that vision of my soul disappeared with the sun.

Sadly what I saw wasn’t really my soul but a phenomenon known as the Specter of Brocken, a rare interplay of the sun and clouds that occurs at mainly at altitude. It is named for the highest peak in the Harz mountains in Germany, where the Specter is said to be a monster of immense proportions which wears a headdress of oak leaves and carries an uprooted pine. It appears suddenly and seems to possess enormous, treetrunk-like limbs. The motion of the climber and the movement of the clouds upon which it is projected seem to give it life, a presence which is at once malign and malicious. It never fails to surprise, causing more than a few climbers to fall to their deaths with shock. I’d seen it once before on Kashima-yari last year, but this time felt different, more proximate, as if I truly was in the company of something sentient. I’m lucky to have seen it at all; Jim Wickwire, one of the first men to climb K2, said he saw it just once in forty years of climbing.

The Specter itself is obviously the result of the climber’s shadow being projected onto nearby clouds. The giant size is a misperception, the same one which makes the moon look larger when it is near the horizon. I’m not sure what causes the rainbows. Maybe some kind of back scattering of the sunlight. I suspect Captain Interesting knows, or has a book that holds the answer.

I was back for another attempt on Kaikomagatake in the Minami Alps. Like last time I started out from the foot of the Todaigawa valley, following the trail along five or six miles and up a few thousand feet through the boulders and debris. The winter snows were melting, turning the Todai river into a boiling, grinding flood of grey water. Rough log bridges that had spanned the current two weeks ago now ended half way across; with pack unclipped and slung over one shoulder, I jumped the gaps. Unlike last time I had a different line planned for my ascent of Kaikoma, one which would take me away from the trade route from Kitazawa, which was deserted two weeks ago but would now be crowded with Golden Week climbers. The map showed a route which branched off the valley and up Nokogiridake (the “Saw Peak”) and along to Kaikoma. Fukuda Kyuya’s description of Kaikoma is filled with superlatives, “the most beautiful of the Alps”, “the hardest climb” and I felt this would be a fitting route since technology has rendered the mountain otherwise overly accessible. I also needed solitude, desolation and a challenge; this promised all three.

Per the map, the climb up Nokogiri should be five hours. However the winter snow still lay thick and rotten on its upper slopes, turning it into a “tottering pile of shit”, to borrow a phrase from Jon Tinker. In turns it went from sawa-nobori (gorge climbing) to bouldering to hacking through steep, dense rhodedendron forest to chest deep snow, knife edge ridges and the constant staccato accompaniment of rockfall. Seven hours later I topped out at 8800 feet and from the summit beheld the long crest to Kaikoma. The north-east side of it was still heavily corniced with snow, while the south-west side was a mess of tumbledown rockfall where the snows had melted and granite boulders career down the mountainside.

The original plan was to make the summit of Kaikoma by nightfall, roll out the bivy and catch both sunset and sunrise. Creeping slowly along the ridge, however, it became evident that I would scarcely make the hut some two hours below Kaikoma before darkness. Progress was slow. Each fixed rope and chain had to be tugged and checked carefully before clipping in. The mountain erodes too fast for anything to stay permanently attached up here. Six hours of butt-clenching fear later I stumbled on the unmanned hut at Roku-gome, tugged at the door and found that snow had drifted inside and frozen it shut. I dug a pit by the door, unpacked the bivy and crawled inside, imagining myself to be cozy in the hut instead.

I woke before the alarm at 3 a.m. to a mighty crash from the valley. Landslides and rockfall are common at this time of year, as the snows melt and the mountains loosen their grip on their fabric. Then another crash and, as I watched the shooting stars from the small gap in the bivy, I imagined the noise to be the hooves of giant horses galloping down below. Kaikomagatake translates to “Horse Peak of the Kai Region”, and in ancient times it was believed that the horses of the gods were stabled here. Some people say it is because the snow forms the shape of a horse as it melts off the peak, but I wondered whether in fact it was the sound of rockfall that gave birth to the myth. Either way, it was time to get moving. An almost lenticular cloud hung over Senjogatake, bringing a warning of worse weather to come and the barometer was already starting to fall.

A few hours later I came over the north-west ridge of Kaikoma to the summit at 9800 feet, joining a few small groups of climbers who had made their way either up the north-east spur from Kurodo or from Kitazawa to the south-east. After some jokey applause and playful taps on my helmet, their general consensus was that only madmen come via Nokogiri. I found it hard to disagree. From the top you can see back down to the grey scar that is the Todaigawa valley. It felt strange to think that in a few hours I would be down there again, but food and fuel had run low on the longer-than-expected Nokogiri route, so down I would have to go. I turned my back on the summit and started the descent, passing hardy bands of climbers making their way up from their multi-colored tents pitched below at Kitazawa.

On the first day I’d met only one other person, Nagase-san the fisherman, who drove up just as I was preparing to depart. He greeted me good morning, then with a great sigh “Aaah, it’s been thirty years since I last came to the Todaigawa valley. Are you climbing Kaikoma?” I said I was, and he told me how he had come here as a high school student when he belonged to the mountaineering club, and they climbed Kaikoma in the days before the Minami-Alps through-road to Kitazawa was built. He was born and raised in Hyogo prefecture west of Kyoto and spent twenty five years as a hardware engineer in Tokyo before returning to Hyogo five years ago to work for a regional sake brewer. I asked if he still climbed. “No, not since high school. I fish. Every day, before and after work! And I remembered the river here, so I drove through the night to see if there might be something good here. Do you know anywhere good to fish?” There was a spot about an hour and a half away that I had passed before, and I offered to lead him there as it was on my way. We walked and talked about mountains and fishing until we reached the pools where mountain trout flitted back and forth. We said goodbye and I carried on up to Nokogiri and beyond.

Returning to the car late the next day, I found a plastic bag tied to the wing mirror, inside of which was a note and a parcel. The note read:

Chris-san,

(I hope you can read Japanese)

Thank you for leading me up to the fishing spot in Todaigawa. I enjoyed our time together, and listening to you talk about the mountains I was reminded of how much I used to love climbing them too. Tomorrow I am going to Tokyo, and while I am there I will buy some hiking boots. I am going to climb the mountains in Hyogo, and when I use my boots I will remember you.

I hope you like fish and sake.

Nagase

Inside the parcel were two mountain trout, carefully gutted, packed in snow and wrapped in newspaper, and a 250cc bottle of sake from his brewery. The fish were promptly grilled over a small fire and the the sake warmed up in the Jetboil. As I sat in the dark valley watching the flames I thought that in some way these mountains had shown me something of my soul after all.

New. Maybe also improved..

April 19, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized
4 Comments 

Mountains are big. I could feel them strain against their cramped borders in the 500×300 images I’d forced them into. They demanded space to breath, and accused me of covering up my deficiencies. A small image hides a multitude of sins. It was time to come clean.

One rainy night in Tokyo later, and here’s the new version. I hope it looks OK. The vagaries of the browser world and propensity for wordpress to render layout differently depending on the installed version makes consistency difficult. I went for fixed sizes, so sorry if you have an enormous screen with a lot of white-space now, or a tiny screen you have to scroll across to see the photos. 56k dialup guys too, I apologise unreservedly - the photos are heavy. But Google Analytics tells me that there’s only two of you out there. And really, it’s 2008. Join us on broadband. You’ll like it better there.

Google also tells me there’s a surprisingly large number of people coming here from UBS and Lehman (hi guys) - thanks as always for taking care of us.

The posts back to last November have been converted to the new large format, I’ll get around to the ones prior to that shortly. So stop back again in a week or so if you want to see them in their enlarged glory.

Finally, there’s a Japanese version of the blog going up soon too. I stopped posting to mixi.jp a while ago when they unilaterally changed their policy to one which would allow them unfettered use of any and all content. I know the technical background, but it still made me uneasy. There’ll be a link at the top of the page, and I am slowly working back through the translations for the English entries so far.

EDIT:

I’ve noticed some of the photos have lost a little resolution as they get scaled from 1024×685 on flickr down to 800x(something) on the site. Anything with diagonal lines looks ugly. I’ll probably make some 800 width versions specially to use instead. Sure beats packing the apartment for the move next week..

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