Two Days in the Mountains

I had an amazing two days in the Northern Alps. I’d planned to stay for two nights and three days, but the forecast called for rain Sunday night and Monday, so I returned a day early. And sure enough, as I write this (Sunday evening), it’s just started to rain here in Nagano.

I’ve posted pictures from the trip — lots of beautiful fall colors starting to emerge in the mountains.

I left early Saturday morning, catching an 8:30 bus from Nagano station for the hour and a half trip to Ougisawa. The weather was perfect.

Ougisawa isn’t a town, but a starting point for tours of Kurobe Dam and Tate-yama, both popular tourist destinations. Tate-yama is one of the most famous and holy mountains in Japan, along with Fuji-san and Haku-san.

The first part of the climb was a steep two and a half hours to a ridge and the Taneike mountain hut. Light clouds were forming in the mountains, and I hiked for about an hour through the clouds before emerging into the sunshine just below Taneike.

The hut was crowded with hikers, many of whom were doing multi-day hikes from hut to hut. Two old women sat down beside me to eat their lunch, and we had a conversation that mostly relied on smiling and laughing. From what I could understand (very little), they’d been hiking for two days in the mountains. One woman made a remark that I’m sure must have been along the lines of, “Pretty good for two old women, eh?” There are a lot more older hikers in Japan than I’ve seen elsewhere.

I pitched my tent in a small camping area near the hut, relieved to get some of the weight off my back. The charge for camping was only ¥500 a night (about $4.50). A night in the hut (more like a lodge) costs around $80. Then I hiked up a nearby peak (Jiigatake) and along the ridges beyond before returning for the night.

There were about a dozen tents in the camping area, and lots of talking and laughing until around 10pm, when everything fell silent. I was woken up at 3am by the sounds of the early risers. By the time I crawled out of my tent at 5:45, half the tents were gone.

I ate breakfast, packed up and started on my way to Shinkoshi hut, a two hour hike along ridges and peaks in the opposite direction of the hiking I’d done the previous day. The first ten minutes of the hike were in dense clouds. But then a wind came along and blew it all away, and I had a beautiful view. I could even see Fuji far away on the horizon, looking very small but still distinct. The rest of the day was clear, but with clouds blowing up and over the mountains, occasionally obscuring the view, but only briefly.

One of the reasons I’d picked this area for this hike was to visit a couple from Fairbanks, whom I’d been in contact with via my step-mom, Sheri. I’d never met Mok Kumagai or his wife, Akiko. They live and work in Alaska, but returned to Japan this summer to work at the Shinkoshi hut.

When I arrived at Shinkoshi, I met Akiko, but found that Mok had gone to Taneike and that I’d passed him on the trail. At this point, I’d decided to return to Nagano on Sunday because of the approaching rain. So instead of continuing on, I headed back to Teneike. I passed Mok again, but this time I knew who I was looking for.

From Teneike, I took the trail down to Ougisawa, making fast time in order to catch the bus back to Nagano. My knees are going to be sore for a while from the quick descent.
In the next couple weeks, the first snows will begin to dust the mountains I visited on this hike. I’m glad to have made this trip in some decent weather. It was definitely the best of the hikes I’ve done while in Japan.