This Mountain Sickness

September 22, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized
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Some call it a sickness. To swap warm beds for nights on cold granite, high above the clouds where the air is thin. A willing choice, a desire even, to leave comfort behind and instead carry your home on your back through the high places of this world. What else could account for all this, if not some tragic disease of the mind?

Mt Kita-dake shines brightly in the autumn sun, defiant against a cobalt sky. Our packs are heavy with the eight days worth of provisions for the long climb ahead, an unsupported voyage through the Minami-Alps. With each footfall we grind a little more of the mountain away. Four thousand and six hundred feet later we sit in the early afternoon sun on the Kotaro ridge, watching the clouds race up the valley. I point out the surrounding mountains to Yuka: Kai-koma, Senjo, Houou-sanzan. The cloud rises higher, blotting the peaks one by one, and finally obscuring Kita-dake too by the time we reach the hut on its northern shoulder. As we pitch the tent, we look out into the gathering darkness and resolve to make the summit before dawn the next day, hopeful of a sunrise to make up for the lost sunset of this first day. We’re halfway through dinner when suddenly the tent lights up, as though on fire.

We race out and confront the conflagration that has consumed the western skies. The cloud-wracked valley seems to seethe, an unearthly scene of orange and red, pierced through by the orb of the sun. Within minutes it transforms again, the mists around us boiling away to leave a sea of clouds below, and within that sea a dozen dark islands where the peaks of the Alps gash through. Yuka bursts into tears. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.” she says, and we stand, arms around each other in the cold wind, watching the sun sink into the milky ocean below.

The next morning, Japan is laid out before us from the summit of Kita-dake. Fuji sits darkly to the east, and to the west we can make out the peaks of Kiso-koma where we’d spent New Year. Far to the north, Yari-ga-take’s sharp peak stands out, no doubt heavy with climbers this long holiday weekend. Reluctantly we leave the summit and climb down the ridge and along towards Mt Aino-ga-take, still making good time despite the burden on our backs. The sun creeps a little higher in the sky, cooking the left side of our bodies while the right side shivers in the wind. By the time we reach Aino, a thin haze has pulled itself across the sky, and the wind blows fiercely. We hurry off, and on the far side of the summit break for lunch, admiring the chain of peaks that march away to the south. Suddenly our journey doesn’t seem so far. Then Yuka pulls off her boot, and mutters darkly under her breath.

The small blister on her heel which we’d treated the day before has become much worse. We re-apply bandages and duct tape the inside of her boot. “I’ll be fine. It’s all downhill for the rest of today, it’ll be fine by tomorrow.” she says, but this is not a good sign.

It’s still only midday when we arrive at the Kuma-no-daira camp, but we decide to pitch the tent anyway and give Yuka’s blisters some time to heal. In the warm afternoon sun we chat to the hut owner. He recounts his days of climbing in the Himalayas, and about how he brought his American wife and 3-month old son to this hut when he started it twenty years ago. The only routes in or out are over the 10,000 foot peaks on either side; so when his son became ill, the hut owner would carry him on his back over those vertiginous summits and down to the villages below, like something from Japanese folklore. He sent them back to the States when his son became too big to do this, but will travel back to see them when the hut closes for the season in three days time.

The inky canopy of the sky is still studded with stars as we pack up the tent the next morning. Yuka’s patched her feet with whatever she can find, but still moves a little slower despite her protests that she is fine. Climbing up is noticeably painful for her, but thankfully the day starts with a long, gently undulating ridge towards Mt Shiomi to the south. The sky is cloudless and perfect, but each slope is taking its toll on Yuka and I’m starting to eye the climb up Shiomi with increasing dread. She barely slackens her pace though, and incredibly we are still running well ahead of the map time.

I know she must be in agony as we hit the steep northern flank of the mountain, yet she laughs and jokes with the climbers descending towards us. She’s properly taking a mouthful of carb-gel every twenty minutes, and knocks her feet forward in her boots every few paces to relieve her heels. Finally at the summit, she excitedly traces the path we’ve taken all the way from Aino with her finger. “We came all that way!” But then it hits her.

“I can’t go on, can I? This is so frustrating. My legs are fine, I could keep doing this for days… but these blisters…. such a small thing. But this isn’t failure. I’ve done three huge mountains, and it’s been fantastic. Just walk me down to the trailhead tomorrow and I’ll go home – you should carry on.” she says. I tell her I’ll think about it. The thought of abandoning the journey tears at me, but so does the thought of going on without Yuka. We don’t talk much as we climb down Shiomi’s sharp western edge and to the busy camp at Sanpuku-mine, with its explosion of multi-coloured tents gleaming under the bright sun.

From the tent, we watch the peaks above us throw longer shadows across the valleys. I’m mentally reorganising the gear I’ll need and my itinerary, when Yuka rolls towards me and says “let’s go home together”. I can’t think of anything to say, so I lie there staring at the ceiling before climbing back up the ridge to take some half-hearted photographs of the sunset. We eat without speaking much, and the next morning I still can’t think of anything to say. Yuka breaks the silence,

“I don’t want to go home either. I keep thinking I might be able to go on, but we both know that’s a stupid idea. But these four days have been amazing, I’ll never forget them. I climbed three mountains, and I made it half way, I carried all my own gear, and if it wasn’t for these blisters I could easily have made it. I don’t want to go home without you. Let’s come back together next year. We’ll start here and we can climb the rest of the route. It’ll be easy!”. She punches me on the arm, and I can’t help laughing. Suddenly we have fun again as we climb down into the Iina valley below and head towards home.

The first thing I saw this morning when I woke up was a map of Japan spread across the end of the bed. Yuka’s sitting next to it, thumbing through my guidebook to the Hundred Famous Mountains of Japan. “Y’know, a lot of these are pretty easy. Day climbs. Huh! I was looking at the calendar, we’ve got a few long weekends coming up. We could go to Kyushu again and climb the south of the island. And Gunma as well. Yakushima, maybe? Come on, get up, let’s sort out the gear and decide what we should take next time!”, she gushes.

Some call it a sickness.

Personally, I think it might be the cure.

The Flow of the Fourth Island

September 4, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized
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Sachiko once hit an American soldier over the head with a flower pot.

Her nose scrunches up as she laughs at the memory, and her face dissolves into a myriad of deep laughter lines. It’s hard to believe that in four hours time, she will turn eighty years old.

We pitched the tent high in the mountains before negotiating the perilous road down into the valley, where the map pointed to an onsen hot spring. At the end of a narrow track, the remains of the onsen lay, its neat perimeter walls now overgrown; in the middle stands a modern cottage, and it was from here that Sachiko bustles forth at the sound of the car’s tyres crunching over the gravelled path.

“Yagase onsen? It was here… but it burnt down ten years ago. I was the owner. Where are you from? England? I love English people! Diana was my favorite. I don’t like Charles though. That woman. I suppose he’ll never be king. I like most Americans. But not Bush. He was just in it for himself. Won’t you come in and at least have something to eat? Have a beer? There’s nowhere else in the valley.” She skips lightly from foot to foot.

We protest mildly, but to no end.

“Two of the boys from the village have come over, too. They’ve probably never met a foreigner before, it will be good for them.”

The boys are sitting at the low table in the middle of the living room, giggling nervously. The older one confirms, indeed, he’s never talked to a foreigner before, and the younger one sits nodding his head vigorously. Sachiko skips in from the kitchen and makes the introductions.

“This is Ken-chan. He’s sixty this year. And this is Dai-chan. He’s fifty-eight.”

Dai-chan says something in the incomprehensible accent of the Tosa region, which makes them all laugh. Sachiko fishes through the small mountain of beer cans on the table until she finds an unopened one, and deftly cracks it open.

“The boys live up by the Todoroki waterfall. Even in this little valley, each hamlet is different. The men of the waterfall have the best hearts. Can’t say the same for their heads, though…” This is the cue for more laughter and impenetrable comments.

Another pack of beers disappears, the boys get to their feet and weave an uncertain path to the door, gently bouncing off each pillar on the way. I offer to drive them home, but they refuse and get into their small white trucks before making their slow way back up the side of the valley towards the waterfall. I wonder aloud if it’s safe for them to be driving in that condition.

“The other evening I found a police car lurking just up the road there,” Sachiko says, “I asked him what he thought he was doing, and he told me he was looking for drunk drivers. I told him to leave immediately! Go and catch the crooks in the city! The men around here need a drink or two in the evening, it’s the only chance to socialise that they get after a day in the fields. And besides, the only person you’ll hurt on these little roads is yourself. I haven’t seen that policeman since.” She sticks her nose defiantly in the air, pulling all four foot ten of her frame ramrod straight and marches briskly back into the house.

Sachiko holds court again.

“I was eating okonomiyaki with my friend at a restaurant just after the war. There were four American soldiers in the next room getting drunk and talking loudly. I told you that I grew up in Hong Kong and Formosa, yes? So I knew a little English, and could tell that they were being so rude. ‘All Japanese girls are pan-pan‘ one of them was saying. That was the slang word for prostitute in those days. Well I stood up, and my friend begged me to calm down but it was too late. I walked into their room, and there they sat grinning at me; maybe they thought the pan-pan had come to them. The noisy one had his back to me, but he is still talking, and such rudeness. “Pan-pan this, pan-pan that”. So I pick up a big flower pot from the alcove and shout ‘No Hiroshima, no Nagasaki, Jesus Christ God dammit, Yankee go home!” and whack I bust it over his head!”

Yuka and I sit open-mouthed as she recounts this tale.

“My friend felt so bad about it all. As she said, we could have been shot; they all had pistols. So we tracked them down to the local hotel where they were staying, and waited in the lobby to apologize. We waited and waited, and after a few hours the clerk finally came to tell us that the soldiers had seen us waiting there and had crept in the back way; it seems that the noisy one was just married, and was afraid we’d report what they’d been saying to their commanding officer. He was in a bad way, too. Had a huge bump on the back of his head, and another on his forehead where he’d smacked into the okonomiyaki hot plate! Ha ha ha!”

Sachiko had clearly been quite a handful in her younger days, and kept her fire as she danced into her ninth decade. She insists we stay the night.

We’d driven from Kobe, over the bridge from the mainland to Shikoku. The least visited of Japan’s four islands, home to two hyakumeizan mountains and innumerable valleys and gorges. Yuka has marked the best waterfalls in red pen on the map; we thread our way along narrow mountain roads, single tracks at best, to stop at each one and hike up the valleys towards the waters that thunder down into aquamarine pools.

A little way from Mt Tsurugi, we set the tent at a deserted campsite. The early evening is perfectly still, and the smoke from our fire rises straight up as we grill fresh aubergines, potatoes and the famous onions of the region. One by one, the stars appear; later, as we swig from a bottle of cheap red wine, the milky way blooms across the sky. I tell Yuka about how the milky way is really the cross sectional view towards the center of our galaxy; she tells the tale of the weaving princess who can cross that milky river once a year to see her lover on the far side. Slowly the fire dies, and we crawl into the tent.

The roads of Shikoku are narrow, and subject to nature’s continual battery. The soil of the region is thin and the mountainsides steep. Every rainfall brings trees and boulders crashing down from above, and every road is scarred by these events. Indeed, driving around the island it would appear that the major industry is road repair; scarcely a few kilometers of open road appear before another set of roadworks is marked by a dozen workers furiously waving red and white flags to direct the traffic. In the hot August sun they wave on each car with a slight bow.

Further into the mountains the roads are narrower still, barely tarmacked tracks and full of blind corners. There is no space for two cars to pass, which has the perverse effect of making everyone speed through these constrictions as insanely high speed, before something comes the other way. We soon adapt. A quick glance in the mirror at the roadside confirms nothing is approaching, mash the accelerator and scream around the corner before jumping on the brakes again. We do this for miles on the way to Tsurugi, only to find that the southern approach road is closed due to landslides. We retrace, and start our climb from the eastern flank.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with the young men nowadays.” Sachiko declares. “They don’t seem interested in women at all. I asked my grandson, and he said he had a steady girlfriend. He’s 18! A steady girlfriend! I told him, you should be seeing as many girls as you can. Just don’t get any funny diseases; always use a condom. He called me pervy. Well is that my fault? I mean when I was his age, I was standing on the docks waving all the young men off to war, all to be killed in China. It just wasn’t possible to have a boyfriend, not even for five minutes.”

The summit of Tsurugi is served by a cable-car, but we take the long route instead, up and through the forests that cling to the mountainside towards the peak of Ichi-no-Mori. The whole of Shikoku stretches out below us, rumpled mountains and deep valleys. As we climb to the marker on Tsurugi, we mix with the day trippers who’ve taken the quick way up. Yes, the summit is overdeveloped, but it is clearly a mountain close to the heart of those Shikoku dwellers who climb it. Dapper old men compete with small children along the wooden boardwalks. “Ah! This is Shikoku!” and “Jirogyu looking wonderful today!”, their voices ring in the fine August air.

We plunge back into the treeline and are soon heading along a rarely used trail. In places the recent rains have brought down trees and landslides across the path, and we skid over the slick mud. This route’s name, the Gyoba or Pilgrims’ Path, attests to its original and long forgotten purpose. In a generation it will probably have returned completely to nature. Yuka charges ahead, loving the terrain. “It’s barely wide enough for one foot.” she cries.

We drive deeper into the heart of the island, furthering our waterfall odyssey. We have each one to ourselves; at the more secluded ones, we strip and run screaming into the icy waters before dragging ourselves out to dry in the blazing sun. Eventually we make it to the southern edge of the island and the waters of the Pacific, and cruise the coast road for a few miles through innumerable rundown towns. Many of the shops are boarded up or deserted; Shikoku is dying. The idea depresses us, so we turn again inland and along another valley to a campsite, where we surprise the elderly warden as she is about to leave for the evening.

“No, there’s nowhere to buy food around here. The man who ran the village store got old, and moved away to the city to join his son. But I can give you some rice to cook.” she offers. We start a small fire and grill what leftovers we have from the previous evening. Without warning, the warden appears again out of the darkness with a watermelon and some cucumbers. She informs us that she’d just picked them from her field, and leaves with the admonition to watch out for mamushi adders. We pull our sleeping bags around us and lie in the long grass as the planetarium wheels above us. Shooting stars gash the sky, and Yuka whoops with each one.

The next morning we duck through the faded entrance curtain of a hillside onsen and out of the seething sun. An old man, bent double with age and wearing just a pair of boxer shorts, shuffles into the lobby and wishes us good day. We buy big chunks of raw bonito and garlic at the local store; scrubbed and fed we make our slow way across the island and towards Mt Ishizuchi.

Tired of hammering at his masters degree, Adam kissed his wife and baby girl goodbye for a few days and came to the Omogo gorge to bike the roads and jump in the icy cold azure pools of the river. The fire is full of charcoal and the cooler full of beer. ” Come on over when you get set up. I’m having a Grateful Dead afternoon.” he offers, as Garcia and the crew drift cooly from the iPod speakers. We pool our resources and end up drinking and cooking deep into the night. He’s the only other camper in the valley, a regular visitor, and knows ever stretch of the river. At midnight we stagger down to the pools and jump into the cold waters. Our howls carry up through the inky gorge; after a minute I jump out and run back to the warmth of the fire on the bank.

It’s a dark and foreboding morning as we race to the shrine that stands at the foot of the mountain. We’re the only climbers today on this side; up the gorge and then the steep side of the valley to the ridge that curls around to below Ishizuchi’s peak. The path is indistinct and little used now, shunned in favour of the cable car which serves the other side of the mountain. Cloud drifts through the buna forests, deadening all sound and covering the waist-high sasa bamboo grass in dew, which soaks us as we push through it. It obscures the sheer drop to our right, and I shout back to Yuka to keep a close eye on where she is walking. Head down she follows, and I can hear her muttering under her breath, “Shuchu, shuchu“. Concentrate, concentrate.

Ishizuchi is a granite island in a sea of cloud. We make our way carefully over the slick rocks and towards the summit marker on the dramatic horn of Tengu-dake. We lie on our stomachs and shuffle our heads over the sheer drop of the summit wall, which falls away into space. I glance down and admire the line of pitons which lie rusting in the cracks below. The summit done, we run down the mountain to soak in the bath of the eerie hotel at the entrance to the gorge. “There’s no-one staying tonight, so I’ve only filled one of the baths. You can get in together if you wish.” the owner tells us. The August rain falls outside, and it’s time to think about heading home.

I ask Sachiko what accounts for her tremendous health and vigour.

“Several years ago we had such snow one night. My uncle, my father’s brother, was staying and he took a walk up the valley.”

I’m starting to wonder if she’d heard my question.

“He walked up the valley to my father’s grave by the roadside, and when he got there he found half a dozen school scarves wound around it. He took them down, and the next day went along to the local school to find the owners. The teacher called all the classes together and asked to whom they belonged. Six of the local children put their hands up, and explained that as they passed they’d felt sorry that the old doctor’s grave should be so cold on such a snowy night. So they put their scarves on it, and continued home. Poor things, they must have been cold without them.”

By now I’ve quite forgotten how we got onto this story.

“The children grew up to be teenagers, and then one night four of them died in a car accident. Their car went off the main road and tumbled down into the valley floor. In memory of their kindness to my father, I walk every day the six kilometers and back from here to the place where they departed this world.”

“That’s my secret. I walk.”

Blow, blow, thou summer wind

July 24, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized
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We’d drifted in and out of consciousness all the long night, the sonic boom of the wind putting pay to any chance of deep sleep. The tent was a living thing, a pulsating beast of pure noise which bent down with each mighty gust to kiss us on our foreheads. Against the steady background roar would come a noise like a cannon every so often, as the wind hit some rock face deep in the valley below us; it was as if the mountain itself had declared war. We were tossed around, our tiny red nylon ship, on a malevolent sea of wild air.

Sleep, when it came, was a ten minute loss of sensation, blackness filled with howling dreams, a brief interlude before being dragged awake again like a struggling fish on a line. In my dreams, huge branches were ripped from distant trees, carried aloft before slicing like knives through the thin tent walls. Each time I woke, I reached up through the dark and pulled down the barometer; each time, it had dropped a little more. This wind, which I had hoped signaled the retreat of the day’s poor weather, was in fact the herald of a worse weather system to come. Each downward lurch of the barometer dragged my heart a little further with it. There would be no summit tomorrow.

It was then that Tim punched me in the face.

He said he’d been dreaming. I asked him what about. Punching me in the face, he replied. I couldn’t blame him. Here we were, his first big mountain expedition, and I had him trapped at 9000 feet in a horrendous storm. Was it any wonder his subconscious had it in for me? Thankfully he punches like a girl. Or so I told him.

Nothing was going according to plan. The previous evening, armed with a metric tonne of meat and vegetables, we arrived at the Todai-gawa valley ready to build a fire that would drive back the night and roast our food. As we stepped out of the car, the ground felt soft underfoot and the smell of the forest filled our lungs. It was then that we realised that everything was sodden. The river growled in the unseen darkness, and we dug with our bare hands under logs and boulders, searching out what little firewood had escaped the rains. Tim pulled a Financial Times from his bag, and the flame soon consumed the front page before dying in the damp. Nothing would hold a light for more than a few seconds. The International section came and went. The pages of Companies & Markets were sacrificed. By the Government Bonds page, things were desperate. We dropped to our knees, blowing furiously at the meager flames, alone in the dark as the clouds swirled menacingly overhead. And then, a crackle. A small piece of tinder had dried out just enough. We blew again. Some more took. We piled on the drier wood and placed the rest around to dry beside the nascent flames as they licked higher into the gloom. Suddenly the night was not so dark, and the thought of cooked meat filled our heads. I pulled out the grill and threw chicken and onions onto it, lobbed a few foiled-wrapped potatoes into the embers for good measure, and sat back.

Then the rain started.

We cooked what we could as the heavens tried to kill our tiny hearth, and we washed it down with a bottle of good red wine. And then another one, before we collapsed in the tent, tired, damp, drunk. But not hungry. The rain hammered down all night, big blats of water which killed the fire, but we didn’t care. We’d overcome the odds for now.

The next dawn a weak sun poked through the clouds to watch us stagger up the Todai-gawa valley towards Mt Kai-koma, with sore heads and a thirst that the gravelly water of the river wouldn’t slake. At least it had stopped raining. I pointed to patches of clearer sky to the north, and pronounced the worst of the weather over. Tim pointed to the sackcloth black clouds to the south, our destination, and proclaimed me delusional. But we were making good time. At the fork of the river there were signposts declaring the Roku-gome route closed. I’d climbed it a few years ago, and could see why they’d shut it off. The memories of crossing the river by shuffling across a fallen tree, fifty feet above the grinding waters below, the unmarked trails and constant clatter of rockfall, they stay fresh in my mind. We moved further south and started up the Yaccho-zaka ridge instead, zig-zagging back and forth. I was happy to see Tim keeping a good pace; his boots were so new that he’d only taken the labels off on the train, and I’d had bad premonitions of his feet turning into burger halfway up the mountain.

At the Odaira hut we shocked the lady warden by telling her we were going to the summit that day. Never, she said. It’s too far, and where will you stay when you get there? You’ll have to climb all the way back down in the dark. Our intention was actually to camp on the summit, but I told her instead that we’d head for the unmanned hut at the top of Roku-gome, forty minutes below the peak on the other side. Her look of concern lifted slightly when I told her about my April expedition through the snow a few years ago up there, and how I’d had to spend the night outside the hut, as the snow had drifted inside and sealed the door. You foreigners are survivors, she said, I suppose you’ll be OK. She gave us sweet rice balls to eat with our coffee, and told us that the forecast was for rain the next day too.

We climbed on. Kitazawa-toge was a city of primary coloured tents set against the deep green of the valley floor, the way a child would draw a mountain campsite. The rain was beating down again by this point. At intervals, groups of bedraggled climbers appeared, fresh from the summit. No views, they said. And the wind’s getting up. You boys had better get a move on. Up through the Sensui-toge pass, and the steep ridge which leads to the peak of Mt Komatsu. We passed the last group climbing down. Finally we had the mountain to ourselves, but as we cleared the ridge I looked to where Mt Kai-koma’s peak should be and saw only thick black clouds. The wind blew harder. It was a tough call. We could probably make the summit by dark, but there was no margin of error. I looked back at Tim; he’d put in a strong day, and it was easy to forget this was his first time out. At the nearest patch of flat ground I unrolled the tent.

We woke at 4:30 the next morning, and lay listening to the wind. The peak still boiled with black cloud, worse even than the day before, and it spared us any discussions of whether we might, or could, or perhaps should try. Some days you get to the top, some days you don’t. We were going home, and it felt like a good decision.

—————————————————————-

I’ve been asked a lot about the ten deaths on Tomuraushi up in Hokkaido last week. My response is that I’m surprised it doesn’t happen with more regularity. Over-zealous guides on a tight schedule taking large groups of elderly and inexperienced climbers into the mountains is a recipe for disaster. It must have been blindingly obvious to the guides that the pace of their group that day in those conditions was woefully inadequate to make their destination. To press on until two dropped of hypothermia, then leave them and three others in a tent with two of the three guides, with one guide taking the rest of the group on was an act of staggering negligence and incompetence.

But it’s sadly not unusual. I’ve seen idiots come down avalanche bowls, and heard of guides sending exhausted single members of a party back down mountains on their own. Everywhere, enormous groups of elderly alpinists, slow and struggling under huge loads, yet always perversely ill-equipped. Team leaders who bully and batter their charges, and groups who climb through ever worsening weather to die by the half dozen just meters from the safety of the huts, and all because “we’ve come this far, it would be a waste to turn back now”.

The heaviest and most dangerous thing you can take to the mountains is your ego.

Where Eagles Daren’t

June 28, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized
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The dull thwack of rotor blades cuts through the thick summer air. We hurry along the knife edge, trying desperately to gain a vantage point. And then we see it through the foliage; a few hundred meters further along, a helicopter hovers motionless above the spire that marks the northern ridge of Mt Kondo. I marvel at the skill that keeps it so close to the trees that crowd the peak.

“Fuck. Someone’s come off Taka-modoshi.” I say, and the Other Englishman nods in silent agreement.

We can see the trees getting thrashed by the downwash of the rotors, but apart from that the mountain is still. The humidity numbs us, and sends rivulets of sweat trickling down our backs and along our arms. It’s hard to imagine, in the warm sun and the deep green of mid-summer, that someone lies in pain and fear just meters away. I watch the thin steel rappel lines snake from the helicopter, and see a medic clamber onto the skid.

Taka-modoshi – “Where eagles turn back” – is a 50m cliff face and the crux of our traverse today. It starts easily enough, but steepens quickly and ends with a swing out and to the right, and across a knife-edge to the safety of the ledge behind. It’s chained along it’s length, but hard to protect otherwise. The drops on each side are dizzying. I’d guided two clients over it in April, and they’d been grateful of the protection of the belay. Today we’ve gone light, but I’m beginning to wonder if we haven’t pared down our kit too far…

A sweet summer breeze blows through the late night streets of Ginza, and in a tiny bar with porthole windows and bedecked in sailing paraphernalia, two Englishmen pour over a map and a list. We’d climbed much of Myogi in late winter, when the ice still clung to the northern faces, but decided that Taka-modoshi was better left for another trip. With a patch of fine weather forecast in the middle of the monsoon season, what better venue for a quick one-dayer?

“Rope?” I ask.

“All the major climbs are chained…” the OE replies. A line goes through that entry on the list. Harness, slings, krabs all follow. We get down to gloves, water, food, sunblock and boots.

“Boots…” mulls the OE, “…I was thinking trail shoes. Then we could run the path at the bottom on the way back.” And so it was.

The calculus of kit is a fine one, but we knew the payoffs between weight and safety. Every minute longer on a climb is another minute in the risk-zone; and every ounce of kit tugs at you, slowing you down. Fast and light, we’d be up and over Taka-modoshi in minutes; but I’d seen people up there for half an hour, clipping and belaying, fighting against the lactic acid build-up in their pumped forearms and trembling legs. More is not always better.

“Ichi for the michi?” the OE asked, fingering his empty beer glass*.

“Sure. Corona with a lime – that vitamin C makes it a health drink.” I said, and with that we toasted tomorrow’s plans.

We part ways with Yuka at Myogi shrine; she’s hiking the trail round the bottom of the mountain towards the stone arches at the Naka-no-dake shrine. The OE shoots up the trail towards the Dai-no-ji, a huge metal kanji that perches on the side of the mountain at 3000 feet and shines across the plain below. It feels good without a pack, without heavy boots, and we slice the map time in half.

The first climb is a 30 meter cliff, generously studded with fist sized holds and a solid chain. To its left is a cave, guarded by a cut stone wall like something out of Indiana Jones; this is the Oku-no-In, Myogi’s hidden temple. We climb the trembling ladder that leads to its inner sanctum, and we can make out a line of ancient statues and inscribed slabs resting against its walls. Light spills from a natural gap in the boulders above. We bow and ask for safe passage, before moving on to the cliffs above.

We pass quickly over the peaks of Mt Hakuun and Mt Souuma, and along the knife edge of the Harane Ridge. These ancient volcanic walls fall away to sheer drops on each side, like the battlements of some long forgotten basalt castle. The forests below are alive with the sounds of cicadas, carried up on a warm breeze and heavy with the scent of cedars. By midday we’re well ahead of the map time, and at the junction of the Onna-zaka trail. A sign in blood red kanji marks the way to the Taka-modoshi, and the OE reads,

“‘Extremely dangerous. Experienced climbers only. Kewashii rock faces.’ What does kewashii mean?”

I thought for a minute, trying to find the right word.

“Gnarly.”

And with that, the helicopter began its slow beat from the valley below.

We continue on, and meet a couple of teams coming the other way. Each bears a different story; someone fell the full 50m, no, someone fell the last section. Maybe a spinal injury, maybe unconscious, no-one seems exactly sure. The last climber we meet is on his own, and has the haunted look of someone who witnessed the whole thing. Someone fell, he says, but gives no details. Be very careful. We assure him we will be.

The OE quickly scales the bottom of the Taka-modoshi and I follow, passing him at the halfway ledge and swiftly making it up and over the top. Swing out to the left, then back across to the right and over the edge, I shout down to him. Minutes later he’s up.

“Not so bad,” he says, “but I wouldn’t like to have done that with a pack on.”

Light and fast was order of the day.

We downclimb and sprint back down the slope to join the hiking trail at the foot of the mountain, then run the 4km back to the onsen hot spring that waits below. We pass teams making their way down, and the lighthearted jokes of those who’ve had a long day echo down the trail.

“You guys are fast. Get us a beer in at the onsen, will you?” one shouts.

“It’ll be warm by the time you get there, old man!” we reply, and their laughter follows us down.

At the onsen, the banter continues into the early evening. We push the accident out of our minds. Everyone is clean and refreshed from the bath, the beer is ice cold. The OE fingers his empty glass.

“Ichi for the michi?” he asks.

“Why not. Beer’s really just a sports malt drink, isn’t it?” I say.

——————————-

* Ichi=one, michi=road….

Yamareco route map

GPX File

Technically, a Taka is a hawk rather than an eagle. But poetry trumps taxonomy in this case.

In the Hall of the Spider King

June 18, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized
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The Philippine tectonic plate crashes into Japan like a beaching battleship, it’s prow rising from the surf; this is the Izu Penninsula. Still it judders from time to time, showering earthquakes up and across the Kanto plain, while its many hot springs are a reminder that Vulcan’s forges hammer away not far from the surface. Yet the folds of its hills and valleys lie within an hour of Tokyo, and so it is that we dash headlong to it at the first sign of a break in the monsoon rains.

We camp not far from the base of Mt Amagi, the jagged half-moon remnants of a long dead volcano, and our goal for the next day. In a quiet valley by a river choked with boulders we pitch the tent, before making our way to the local hot spring where we poach ourselves lightly in the gathering dusk. Small wisps of high cloud move fast across the moonless sky with the westerly breeze, a suggestion that the fine weather will be short-lived; our little window grows smaller, and we resolve to get up at first light to beat the rain. It’s dark by the time we reach the tent, but the air is filled with the chorus of frogs in the rice fields and the glow of fireflies, who dart in and out of the wasabi leaves which line the banks of the river.

The next day breaks with grey clouds cruising the peaks, heavy with the threat of rain. Even in our haste, though, we cannot resist stopping the car at the Joren waterfall on the way; 5a.m. on a Sunday is probably the only time you’ll ever see it devoid of its usual coach parties and tourists. We make our way down along the path towards the roaring waters below, where we startle a white crane which has been drinking in the pools. It takes elegantly to the skies, crossing in front of the waterfall once, then again, then off into the early morning sky.

At the old Amagi tunnel we start out along a deserted road which winds slowly up next to a gushing river. Spider webs lie thick across the path, heavy with dew, and we duck below them or with silent apology cut through them with a stick. Two deer, drinking from the river below, run crashing up the opposite slope as we approach, pausing on the opposite bank to watch us pass with doleful black eyes. A baby mamushi, one of the few mildly poisonous snakes in Japan, slithers across a nearby rock. It’s hard to imagine you are only 100km from the heart of Tokyo.

As we climb, the forest changes from farmed cedars to primeval buna beech woods. These islands were once covered with these beautiful trees, but now they are so rare that the maps actually make a special note of areas where the buna still grow. Where the ground below the cedars is a dead carpet of fallen brown needles, the buna forests are filled with grasses and bushes, with airy canopies that spill the early sun in pools of light below. Where usually I would climb quickly through forest, the better to get to the open skies of high ground, today I linger and we run from tree to tree delighting in their crooked shapes and strange branches.

The path narrows, and presently the trees too close in, so close at times that their branches mesh across the track like a leafy tunnel. We reach Haccho-ike pond at around 4000 feet, where we eat fresh corn on the cob and watch the mist swirl across the water, while unseen frogs chirp from the banks.

As we climb further along the ridge, towards the summit and towards the coast, the weather starts to close in. The fog lies across the primeval buna, like a scene in an ancient Japanese folktale. It’s the kind of place you might lie down to sleep for five minutes, only to wake and find a hundred years gone by. The fog brings down with it the scent of blossoms from some shrub we cannot find, but it perfumes the forest sweetly like earl grey tea. Through the mist and this scent we pass, just we two. We haven’t met another soul all day.

The summit of the Amagi range, and the highest point in Izu, is Mt Banzaburo. As we approach, we hear voices, and then we make out a score of climbers who have made their way from the quick loop up the eastern side of the mountain. The summit is small and crowded, too cloudy to make out a view, so we tag the peak and quickly disappear back into the forest from which we’d come.

“How far did we walk?” Yuka asks as we arrive back at the car.
“About 25 something kilometers.” I reply.
“That was great. We should come to Izu again.” she says, and I grin, aiming the car squarely for the nearest hot spring.

The legend of Joren waterfall goes like this:
A woodcutter rested by the waterfall one day, and as he dozed in the hot sun he noticed that a wasp-spider (jomo-gumo) was winding a web around his leg. “She must have mistaken my leg for a branch”, he thought to himself, and with a stick carefully twisted the silk from his leg and laid it on the ground. With that, there was a mighty shaking of the earth, and a great hole opened up, swallowing the stick and the web. The woodcutter ran to his village, telling the villagers “The master of the Joren waterfall is a beautiful wasp-spider. But if he catches you, he will wind his web around you, drag you to his lair and you’ll never leave!”. The villagers never approached the waterfall again.

Yuka was right, Izu has a way of getting under your skin. That old spider still has some powerful magic.

Golden is the week

May 6, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized
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I pulled the rope from the pack, and with it flooded the aroma of sunlight and the memories of the previous day’s climb on Mt Myogi. This morning, though, long unused belay muscles twinge, while somewhere under the mess of slings and karabiners in the corner sleep my boots, still dusty with the trail. On the way back from Myogi, the Other Englishman had phoned.
“I’m back in Japan. Fancy a walk tomorrow?”

Tanzawa is the easiest of the hyakumeizan, the hundred famous mountains, to reach from Tokyo. Easy to get to, easy to climb, I’d held it in reserve for just such an occasion. With the weather closing in, it looked like we’d have a perfect 36 hours to slot it in. Back from Myogi, I grab a few hours sleep, before again tipping out the pack and ransacking the cupboards for food. There’s no instant coffee to be found. Just half a dozen oddly shaped chinese herbal teabags that smell like feet. I throw them in the bag anyway and run for the station. The early train brims with the party people, wending their way home after a night in Roppongi, red-eyed and thick with the smell of cigarettes and alcohol and busted dreams of naughtiness. The Other Englishman gets on, and as the train moves from the tunnels and into the overground system, we note with approval the gathering sunlight that bodes a fine day.

Lao Tsu said that the five colours will blind the eye, and excessive company dulls the spirit. But it cuts both ways. Recent climbs have been splendid monochromes, white snow on cobalt skies, deserted, solitary, just a headful of thoughts and my own voice for companionship.Â The steady stream of Golden Week climbers, making their way towards Tanzawa through the farms and fields at Okura, though, is a pleasant contrast. If the roots of Japanese mountaineering lie in the ancient pilgrimages, then this is the modern incarnation. Children and day-trippers in jeans and t-shirts vie with the hardcore, who lumber under their packs in expensive technical leggings and tough boots, but all are headed to the peaks to offer thanks to the twins gods of leisure goods and national holidays.

Our goal today is the peak of Hiru-ga-take, a short five or so hours from the foot of the mountain. The slope is steep, and I have slight pangs of envy as the OE recounts the story of his climb in February this year, when the snow lay thick on the ground. The wooden walkways and steps which protect the mountain from erosion, the inevitable penalty for the crime of existing so close to the world’s densest metropolis, are pitted and chipped by the crampons of those who climb during the colder seasons. Half the trail is sadly clad in these erosion protection devices, and each seems designed by a committee of sadists, who have carefully measured the gait and length of the human stride and then made steps that exactly don’t match it. We climb on, effortlessly switching the lead as one or other tires of seeking a line through the debris, until we sight the hut at the summit of Tou-no-take.

The Tanzawa range is less famous for what it is, and more for what you can see from it. Fuji rises out of the plain, unobstructed, to the west, while the Pacific glistens between the arms of the Ise and Chiba peninsulas. In autumn, the maples set its slopes on fire, and in a few weeks the white mizubasho will flower and draw the crowds. Tou-no-take is as far as many are content to come, but the cold wind suggests to us that it is time to move on and along the ridge to Tanzawa-san and beyond.

The ridge linking Tou to Tanzawa is crumbling and returning its material to the sea. Bridges and ropes, so bright that they can be scarcely more than a winter or two old, lie collapsed and fallen into the ravine. The crowds don’t follow, and we have the back of the mountain to ourselves. The managed forests of conifers give way to sparse deciduous woods, linked by pastures of wiry yellow grass; were it not for Fuji’s iconic frame floating on the near horizon, we could have been walking any of the moors or hilltops of home.

The summit of Tanzawa-san itself is nondescript, lower than both its neighbors, and we pass quickly over it. The landscape grows wilder, gashed only by the single track that makes its way along the ridge. Fuji hides. Like zen and ikebana, it knows that the most powerful transformations come when the unseen becomes the seen, and so it waits, hidden by the ridge before bursting from the sudden plain as we come over the crest. A boiling skirt of clouds spreads from its flanks, tumbling and seething, spilling over the Hinokibora ridge like milk. Our breath is momentarily taken from us, but with renewed energy in our souls we make for Hiru-ga-take, where the hut sits on the peak, heavy with the promise of views of Fuji unobstructed.

Yari-ga-take is named for its spear-like prominence, Shirouma for the outline of a horse which is said to appear as the snow melts from its flanks. Many Japanese mountains are named for their resemblance to some other thing. Hiru-ga-take, however, is named for its most famous fauna: the leech. Said to be so numerous in the warmer months that they drop from the trees onto unsuspecting climbers, they add an unexpected challenge to this otherwise straightforward mountain. Fortunately, spring has not yet reached the upper slopes of Hiru, and so we make the hut with our full compliment of corpuscles, and sit in the early evening light with a beer, each other, and Fuji for company.

We wake to a Scottish dawn of fog and chill; as expected the weather window is closing, and by 5 a.m. we’re sprinting towards Hinokibora-yama, the last climb of the trip. We can already taste the beer and feel the warm waters of the hot spring that wait for us down below, and pummel the course time to get us there all the faster. Up and over, and soon racing down the final ridge, we rejoin the world at the crowded campsite in the valley, where an army of giant Coleman tents have invaded and now cover every square inch. Our bodies quickly blend into the crowds, but our souls remain high.

My Patagonia

April 30, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized
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The three minute warning. In the dark days of the early 80’s, it was a key part of every schoolboy’s lexicon. When Mother Russia pressed the button, that was all the time you’d have until the mushroom clouds blossomed above the craters where every English city used to be. What would you do in those three minutes? Where would you go? It was unacceptable not to have a snappy answer. Boil an egg. Jump off the school roof. Punch a teacher. Try to feel up that girl in the next classroom.

We were force-fed “Z for Zachariah” and Greenham Common. In 1985, the BBC finally aired “The War Game”, a film depicting the aftermath of the seemingly inevitable nuclear strike. It had been embargoed for twenty years, judged “too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting”. I don’t think I was allowed to watch it at home, but it didn’t matter; our slightly-to-the-left-of-Trotsky English teacher showed it to us in the classroom anyway. We all knew what was going to happen. Morrissey had said as much. The end of the world, and you weren’t sure whether it would be better to survive or be drunk and under the first bomb.

Do you know what you get when you Google “3 minute warning” now?

A professional wrestling tag team. And a Welsh ska band.

The wall came down, Gorbachev and Reagan had their love-in, and then Yeltsin sold off the war machine to his buddies from the bottom of a vodka bottle, just to be sure. All that worrying, it seems so quaint. I wonder what schoolboys worry about these days. If music is a reflection of the times, and The Smiths was our nuclear conflagration, then they don’t appear to have much on their minds, judging by Miley Cyrus and Kayne West. Maybe I’m just getting old. But damn, if our world was going to end in flames, then at least we had a decent soundtrack.

These are the thoughts that wander through my mind as I lie, watching the stars, from the floor of the Todai-gawa valley. The fire is dying, and the two-mouthful hip-flask of Lagavulin sits empty at my side. The mountains brood in the darkness on either side, and even though the night is cloudless, there is the occasional flash of light from the south as some distant electrical storm discharges itself. Yuka paces backwards and forwards. “I’m trying to feel my fear,” she says. I boil some water and pour it into a flask for her hot water bottle, and shortly we lie down to sleep with the sound of the river echoing around.

The morning chill reminds us that it is not yet May, and that the valley, so low against the mountains, is still at over three thousand feet. As Yuka pokes her nose out of the sleeping bag, I dash around picking up sticks for a fire. There’s plenty of wood here, trees and branches scraped from the mountainsides by landslide, lightning and flood. Blanched white by the sun it lies scattered, as if the riverbed were a mess of thighbones and ribs. I light the pyre, and it roars to life fueled by the chill wind which the river carries down from the peaks, and with it the smell of snow. We’d found a small restaurant in Chino the night before where they cure their own bacon, and we bought a slab the size of a forearm; now carved into thick slices and impaled on sticks, it spits and sends puffs of blue smoke into the milky pre-dawn air.

Todai-gawa valley is utterly deserted. Long ago, before they built the Minami-Alps Rindo, this was one of the main entrances to the Southern Alps. The broken down huts which lie along it are testament both to its history, and the fact that few travel this way any more, the Goretex-clad hoards preferring the buses which take you right to Kitazawa-toge and its well appointed lodges. And that’s why I like it here. It’s not a beautiful valley in any classic sense. Chocked with boulders and tree trunks, a pancake flat floor a hundred or so meters across, it winds up from Todai to the bottom of Kitazawa, an unstoppable highway of destruction. Quiet and solitary, there is no path, just a feeling and the occasional faded twist of red cloth tied to a tree or rock by some long-passed traveller. It’s also a deceptive climb; only an odd tightness in the quadriceps the following day betrays the 3000 foot rise in altitude along its course, a fact I don’t mention to Yuka. Still conscious that we smell deliciously of bacon, I double check the bear bell and capsicum spray, and we set out.

The lightshow starts around 6a.m. as the sun pulls level with the far peaks of Kai-koma and Nokko-giri, sending shards of gold through the sky. Within minutes the mountains are a tinged a pale blue, and then the sun peeps over the ridge and light spills into the the western side of the valley. It’s my third time to see this, and it never disappoints. Yuka squeezes my arm and tells me she can understand why I love this nondescript valley so much.

Light snowfall this year has deprived the river of its usual life. Where I’d waded across raging currents last year, today there is dry gravel, and it looks like the hank of rope in my pack will go unused. The intricate web of cris-crossing streams has been replaced by a single, wide thread of water, which crashes through the boulders and through the thick, grey silt. The sides of the valley continue to crumble, and at one point pebbles rain down and hit the water like sniper’s bullets, probably sent upon us by a deer or tanuki raccoon-dog scrambling on the upper slopes. I show Yuka how to pull her pack over her head for protection, and we hurry on.

Mount Kai-koma glistens in the distance as the sun glints off the last of the winter snows. It’s one of the things that draws me here, the long walk in to the foot of the mountain. Six or so miles along the valley floor with the mountain almost continually in sight, beckoning. With the conveniences of road and rail, it’s hard to find that elsewhere in Japan, as if having to walk many hours just to get to the foot of the mountain were something abhorrent. How much better to stand on that peak which has filled your eyes for so many hours, growing larger with each passing step. Today, though, we take our time, investigating the many waterfalls which spill from the mountains on either side, sometimes gazing up at the sheer walls and spying the distant line of the Minami-Alps Rindo which has been carved into the rock high above.

By late morning, we reach our destination, the fork where the Todai-gawa river meets its other major tributary and the path leads off and up Yacho-zaka towards Kitazawa. A large sign, new since I was last here, announces that the Roku-gome course is closed to climbers. It doesn’t suprise me. I tried it last year, and it was pure death. Blocks of snow came crashing down from above, and there was not so much a route as a place where it felt that the human body might squeeze between the boulders, the raging river and the trees felled across the way. But here, at the mountain’s foot, it’s peaceful and we lie in the sun listening to the sound of the water and the call of the deer, before making our way slowly back down again.

For Bruce Chatwin it was Patagonia, that place he felt would be safe in the years after the coming nuclear war. And if the end comes, you’ll find me in the Todai valley, far above the world, watching the stars pass overhead as the fire dies to ash and the river crashes on regardless.

Gods & Ghosts

April 23, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized
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I packed my gear and told myself it didn’t matter. I’d made the sensible decision. A prudent judgment call. “Summiting is optional, getting down is mandatory”. And all the other comfortable homilies and half truths, salves on a wound of defeat. Climb back down and tell myself I’d done my best, but that the conditions were simply wrong. That I didn’t need this and that I was here for the experience of being here, and not simply to get to the top, and that Yuka would approve and that everyone would understand and say how sensible I’d been and…. bollocks.

You just had to look back, didn’t you?

Mt Goryu’s north face towers above, brutal as a medieval god. I can see the ridge where I’d quit the previous day, driven back by the fear of sluff avalanche as the sun baked the snowpack. A little higher still is the spot where I had turned back a few hours earlier this morning, exhausted by the hard ice of the pre-dawn. From there I’d looked down between my feet and past the point of the crampons, down at the kilometer of ice and snow which funnels off Goryu’s peak and into the unseen valley below, and I knew I didn’t have it in me to climb higher.

So why I am still looking?

Two days ago, I’d started out along the Happo ridge, through the ski resort and the low clouds. In summer, it’s a dull climb along the boardwalks which snake around Mt Happo, desperate attempts to control the erosion of a million sneaker-clad feet. They come to see the North Alps reflected in the depths of the little lake. In winter, though, I’m alone, free to make my own course through the slushy late season snow, to where Lake Happo slumbers under the ice. I look down on the sea of clouds, imagining all those people for whom today is grey and overcast. Yet here I am bathed in the glow of the sun, the sole participant in this evening’s lightshow. But it’s going to get dark fast; I need to start digging.

Fifteen minutes gives me a pleasing, bath-tub sized trench in the snow; it’s too warm for a full snow-cave tonight. I make sure to dig a window facing due East, then climb inside and out of the strong wind that presages the gathering warm front. The wind catches the tarp roof from time to time, lifting it and then slamming it down, momentarily sending a soft shockwave through the air of the cave like a deep sigh. I imagine myself to be in the very womb of the mountain.

There’s a right time and a wrong time to remember that you didn’t pack the fork. The right time is just as you leave the apartment, or maybe while standing outside a convenience store along the way. The wrong time is when your noodles come to the boil some 6,500 feet up a snowy mountain. But as Confucius said, man who has a pencil and a toothbrush also has a pair of chopsticks. Five minutes later, warm and full of food, I dig a shelf for the alarm clock, and the last thing I remember is looking out over the tops of those dark clouds that swirl above the Hakuba valley.

The sound of the alarm jars me out of my sleep. I’d been dreaming the same dream I often have up here, that hundreds of people have set up camp around me in the night. Is it the subconcious craving for company, or a reaction to the unusual feeling of being completely alone? Or a fear that the hoards will disturb these peaceful mountains?

Not more than a suggestion, a glimmer, a hint of a red line scrapes across the horizon. From my window I watch the inky sky lighten by degrees; propped up in the warm sleeping bag, I nurse a pot of coffee and think to myself that there is nowhere I’d rather be at 4a.m. on a Saturday. No hotel on earth offers a room with a such a view. Within minutes the sky catches fire, and the peaks of the Alps are clad in soft pinks and oranges, turning their austere milky flanks into pastel canvases for the dawn.

The wind is still strong, but without a cloud in the sky the temperature will soon rise and the snow will start to soften. I cast a long shadow on the ground as I move off and up. Higher now, the smooth lines of Mt Maruyama are set against the jagged cliffs of the Fuki ridge, whose three turrets roar into the sky. I’d climbed them a few years ago on my way from Mt Shirouma on a rainy Sunday morning, and was glad that my route today would not cross them. Still higher, and with every step Mt Karamatsu rises, its white pyramid piercing the lapis lazuli sky.

To my right lies Mt Shirouma, to my left Mt Goryu and Mt Kashima-yari. Goryu is bludgeon, a square-shouldered brute with enormous presence, while its brother Kashima is finely fluted, a twin-peaked poseur which shines in the morning glow.

Turning south along the ridge from Karamatsu, I make my way around Mt Daikoku, chopping the fixed chains from the ice and snow. From here, Goryu looks like no big deal. It’s only a few hundred feet higher than Karamatsu, and the ridge looks as straight and flat as a highway. Ambitious thoughts creep through my mind, visions of racing up Goryu and being halfway to Kashima, even, by nightfall. But I know I’m fooling myself, I know what lies in store. From here, Goryu looks you straight in the eye. Then it knocks you to the ground, sending you down to grovel in the saddle at its base, 1,300 feet below the summit again.

The ridge is heavy with cornices which hang, threateningly, over the slopes below. From above, they simply look like part of the mountain itself; it would be all too easy to walk across one, perhaps falling through or collapsing it with your weight. I watch for the telltale cracks and holes which mark their edge, always making for the areas where trees, sticking forlornly from the snow, betray the presence of firm ground beneath. The raicho ptamigon call softly, unseen, to one another, while black crows drift up on thermals from the valley.

Goryu creeps closer, slowly squeezing all else from view, until those rocky shoulders are all I can see. In the saddle, the mountain huts lie buried so I start my excavation in a snow drift out of the wind. Today’s cave is an achitectural masterpiece, a work of passion, but the afternoon is drawing on and I have little time to admire my creation. I pull out the rope and, clanking with ironmongery in the thin air, I set out for the summit.

The sun’s embrace is quickly turning the top of the snowpack into slush, and it’s exhausting to push through it, all the time kicking the crampons and hammering the axes down into the safety of the ice beneath. As I climb, I notice the face is streaked with lines where the snow has slipped across the icier layers beneath.Â Finally I reach a rocky outcrop below Goryu’s left shoulder, lungs spewing battery acid. As I sit there, a wide patch of snow in the gully in front of me languidly starts to slide for no reason, piling and folding up on itself as it gracefully slips a hundred meters or so down the mountain. Get hit by one of those, and it would be like a sumo wrestler patiently edging you off the dojo with aÂ powerful inevitability. I tell myself tomorrow morning will be better, I should climb before the sun comes up, climb when the snow is solid and compacted. As the sun sets I go down and seek out the safety of the cave.

The pale half-moon creeps across the sky as I set out the next morning. Where I’d sunk to my thighs through the slush the previous afternoon, now the snow was so solid that the crampons barely bit into it. Climbing higher, I reach the spot where I’d turned back the previous day and rested again. Slush yesterday, this morning it’s an ice rink. The next gully is steep and smooth, a luge-like funnel. I fix a poor belay into the rock outcrop and move off, and it is here that I look down at the long tongue of slick ice that runs a thousand meters down below me.

The ice horribly uneven, sometimes thick but hard as a nail, and sometimes deceptively thin, just a crust on top of snow beneath. I look down again, hanging off my axe leashes, then look up at the headwall of Goryu’s north face above me. Cautiously I move back to the outcrop, pretending that I’m going to rest there for a moment while I figure out a better line, but all the time knowing that I’m going to turn back again. Imagination is a poor climbing partner, but I cannot shake the image in my head of the axes popping from the ice, sending me speeding down the slick face of the mountain.

As the sun clears the horizon, rising through the mist that hangs in the valley, I climb down and fill my head with reasons and excuses. It had been a brave attempt. I’d given it two goes, hadn’t I? Good enough, no? At the cave I pack my things, and as I do I see two climbers coming up the Toomi ridge towards me, no doubt heading to Goryu. Safer with two, yes. Sensible guys. I’ll pass them on the way down. They’ll ask if I summited and I’ll tell them it was too much for me. I’ll grin and they’ll say something nice. Maybe they won’t make it, either.

One last look at the mountain before I go down.

A minutes passes. Then one more.

Time to move.

But not downwards.

Off with the pack, off with the harness and the rope and the ice-screws and runners. Clip a bottle of water and the camera to my belt, an axe in each hand, and I go. From the first footstep, I know it’s right. I’m flying. Not a foot wrong. The ice is perfect, softened by the morning sun, each placement smooth. Da-shang da-shang, the axes hit home as I roar up the gully towards the headwall. And then I was gone. I remember every inch, but I was no longer climbing the mountain. I was swimming through it, and it through me. It was beautiful.

The headwall vanished in an instant. Within seconds I was up, skirting the cornices and moving swiftly over the icy rocks to the summit marker. I lie there gulping down huge lungfuls of thin air, wondering what had just happened.

Strange things happen on mountains. They are the borders of our world, a grey zone between life and death, where we are never more than visitors. Sometimes we meet our true selves there, sometimes we realise inexplicable truths. They are the realm of gods and ghosts, as any ancient culture will tell you.

As I lay on that summit I felt the blood course through me, the wind and the sun on my face, and I wanted for nothing more.

Comfortably stuck

April 13, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized
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“You OK?”. My voice echoes off the steep cliffs of Mt Myogi’s peak. The fixed chain leading down has stopped its clanging; there’s an ominous silence.

“Yes. I’m….”. The chain moves a little. “I’m… comfortably stuck.”

She appears over the lip of the wall, and inches slowly down. A warm spring breeze blows lazily up from the valley below. The only sounds are the calls of deer and the quiet snick-snick of karabiner gates as Yuka carefully clips down the chain. Myogi is the crumbling remains of a volcanic caldera, sheer drops and impossible towers, an aerie ruin of black, broken teeth punched through an ancient seabed. It pays to be careful up here.

Still ten feet off the deck, Yuka loses her footing on the sheer wall and drops, but the sling brings her up short. She eyes it nervously, then looks down at me and grins.

“Once I started to fall, it wasn’t so bad any more..”

I close my eyes, and when I wake up I’m in another city. More meetings, more people. London. I close my eyes again. Asia. Singapore, maybe? I’m so tired, I can’t remember what month it is. More hands are shook. Everyone’s excited. Everyone’s scared. Everyone’s stuck. I close my eyes again, and I’m home. I need to climb a mountain.

We find our muscles as we set out from the shrine at Myogi’s base, where the cherry blossom explodes against a liquid blue sky. Ten thousand cherry trees dot the landscape around the mountain, so the taxi driver tells us. Just a month ago there was still ice on the trail, and I’d waded through snow to the base of a roaring waterfall to fill my bottle. Now we kick up clouds of dust as we walk over the dry soil; the waterfall is barely a trickle down the rock face.

The tourist trail weaves around the edge of the mountain, but we are quick to branch off and make for the walls above. We climb up, and before long we have them to ourselves. Sandstone gives way to granite. The walls hang closer now, at once oppressive and protective. We race the morning sun as it climbs into the sky, up and up to the knife-edge ridges that run between Myogi’s crumbling towers, ridges no more than a few inches wide in parts. The valley opens out below us, and to the north Mt Asama sends up plumes of smoke, a constant reminder of the primeval forces that still conspire to shape these fragile islands.

Most Japanese mountains have a section marked “dangerous”, a tiny red kanji in a small circle, with maybe an admonition for the inexperienced to steer clear. On Myogi, the entire map is a mess of red. It’s this that has bought the yamabushi, those followers of ascetic Buddhism, to these crags for centuries. Pitting body and soul against granite and gravity, they cut away at the meaningless excesses of existence until they become the very stuff of the mountain itself. It’s not hard to imagine them striding through these peaks, fleeting shadows seen from the corner of an eye, set against a charcoal watercolour landscape.

Only 1100 meters at its highest point, Myogi has neither the physical stature of its Alpine cousins to the west and north, nor does it boast grand temple complexes like Kumano or Togakushi. Yet something in the way it juts defiantly straight out from the plane below, its fingers renting the sky apart, gives it a formidable majesty that the easy, grass-covered slopes of its peers lack. Even the Joetsu Highway dares not lay a tunnel beneath Myogi, settling to curl languidly around it instead, the better for travellers to gaze up at those spires and wonder what secrets they hold.

Like shipwrecked mariners we flop onto the top of the Higashi-dake tower, hot and grimy under the midday sun. The deer are still calling out their warnings from somewhere in the forest below.

I close my eyes.

I’m in another city, sitting on the ledge of a tall building. I look around.

Everyone’s scared. Everyone’s excited.

I’m…. comfortably stuck.

And then I’m falling, slipping through space, watching the rope snake out above me. It’s going to be OK.

Once I started to fall, it wasn’t so bad any more..