A meizanologist's diary (95)

19 January: as the proud holder of a Japan Rail Pass, I’m contemplating a little Hyakumeizan foray – change at Kyoto onto the Shinkansen, zoom down to Okayama, take the local train over to Shikoku for a cable car-assisted mountain excursion (yes, a bit soft, I know) – when the Sensei says we’ll be getting up at 4.30am tomorrow.

We, I ask? Well, it seems that Alpinist A, not content with the hours of trail-breaking we did on Gomando-yama, now wants to tackle an even longer ridge in our local mountains. And we will be breaking trail all the way this time. So Alpinist A needs as large a crew as she can get. That means both of us.

We have animadverted before on the art of “rasseru”, or breaking trail on snowshoes. In deep snow, the sensation is like drowning in mochi, those glutinous rice-cakes that every New Year choke some unfortunates to death. Any invitation to rasseru should be viewed with intense suspicion.

Shortly after daybreak, Y-san drives us up to the deserted hamlet of Ohara. Well, not quite deserted: a plume of fragrant woodsmoke winds up from one of the rustic rooftops. We start by attacking a steep wall of snow. Our approaches vary from front-pointing direttissima with snowshoes, to zig-zagging with snowshoes, or taking off the snowshoes altogether.

Then we start on the “rasseru” proper. Down here in the woods, the snow seems to be bottomless. Everyone takes their turn rasseru-ing, even our oldest team member, who is in his eighth decade. Somewhere below the ridgeline, my snowshoe comes off my boot and I cede the lead to S-san (I hope she didn't hear what I said about snowshoe straps). 

At last, we’re up on the ridge. I’d expected the snow to be shallower up there – surely the wind must have carried some away – but, no, it’s as cloying as ever. At least we’re in the sunlight now. We wallow upwards through the beech trees until we find a clearing. It’s time for a break.

Back in the lead, crunching through the sastrugi on an exposed hummock, I wander left and right in search of firmer snow: surely the wind must have tamped it down somewhere? Intriguing that it hasn’t. Aren't you amazed by this, I feel like asking, in that favourite phrase of Terada Torihiko. 

Now we’re at the foot of the final upswing towards Itadani-no-kashira. “Let Alpinist A. lead this bit,” suggests the Sensei. But her words are superfluous. I have already ground to a halt, swamped and defeated by snow that has turned to mochi on this south-facing slope.

Up on the main ridge, we take a break within a stand of frozen trees. Leaning in towards each other, two wizened veterans appear to be conversing with each other. Hakusan, completely unshrouded today, floats ethereally into view over the intervening ridges.

Then we set off along the main ridge towards Toritate-yama, our descent route. No more rasseru-ing, thank goodness: we're now on a popular traverse route with a beaten-out trail. In the clear air, we are kings of infinite space, poised midway between the blue smudge of sea horizon out to the west and the great white mountain behind us.

Writing about a broad upland in Hokkaido, the Hyakumeizan author opined that “This scale, this expansiveness, this liberality is not found in the landscapes of Honshu.” But was he ever up here in his local mountains on a bright January afternoon?

Back in town, we look at the weather forecast. Turns out that it was cloudy all day in those cable car-festooned mountains of Shikoku. Could it be that, one day, I will learn to love the rasseru?

A meizanologist's diary (94)

12 January: The sight of a charging tyrannosaurus jolts me out of an early morning nap .... 

Yet all is well. The lifesize effigy is made merely of papier-mâché and it guards the entrance to a local museum. So, unmolested we keep driving towards Gomando-yama. 

Gomando: what an evocative name for a mountain! In days gone by, the villagers used to conduct a “goma”, or fire ceremony, to pray for rain or alleviate an epidemic. So a “gomando” must be the hall that they built to house the sacred flame and, perhaps, a statue of the Fudō Myō-ō along with it. Lapsing back into a snooze in the warm car, I conjure up a graceful mountaintop pavilion, perhaps a delicate octagonal structure like Prince Shotoku’s famous Yumedono at the Nara Hōryūji …

Fifteen minutes later, reality catches up. Now on our snowshoes, K-san and I assail a steep wall of fresh powder snow. The slope keeps collapsing, so that we flounder around in an ever-expanding sinkhole.

Then we pick up a pair of old ski-tracks. As the snowshoes sink slightly less profoundly in the pre-compacted snow, we start making progress. Until we reach a knoll where the skiers evidently gave up and turned back. “I’ll take over now,” says the Sensei, “as you obviously don’t have the technique for fresh snow.”

Smarting from this rebuke – but admitting its justness – I slump to the back of the group. Now we’re emerging from the trees onto a snowy whaleback. The sun should have risen by now, but clouds filter its light, if any, so that we seem to be wading through a blue wash. Thanks to a bitter cross-wind, the ridge both looks and feels cold.

Up front, some kind of edifice starts to rise above the skyline. Instead of an octagonal hall of dreams, though, we raise a monstrous steel panel. “A reflector board,” somebody explains, “so that they can watch TV shows in the valley below.”

On the other side of the bare summit, we regroup within a huddle of frozen trees. The plan now is to traverse the connecting ridge from Gomando-yama over to Toritate – from where, with luck, we’ll find a readymade snow trail back down to the road. Toritate might as well be a megaparsec distant: can we really do this, breaking trail all the way?

A short descent brings us back into the trees. Filtered through the clouds, the light is completely flat now – the frozen trees are pallid against a pale blackcloth. Even in the snow at our feet, it’s hard to pick up hollows and ridges until we stumble into them. Wandering blankly through the white-out, from copse to copse of frozen trees, we find our way forwards. Yet, who knows how, we stay on top of our ridge. The route-finding starts to be intriguing ....

Around noon, when some feeble sunlight starts to push through the clouds, we take a break in the lee of a snowbank. Sheltered from the wind, we can take off our gloves and unwrap the day’s rations of onigiri and sweet potatoes. Lunch is overdue. Distracted by this wholesome fare, we hardly notice the two hikers who have arrived on top of our snowbank from the opposite direction.

When we do remember our manners, our greetings are heartfelt. For the issue is no longer in question. There’ll be no more trail-breaking or route-finding: the two snowshoers have paved the way from the top of Toritate, as we have paved the way for them over to Gomando. The clouds are clearing now, except in the direction of Hakusan, who continues to lurk under a wall of orographic clag topped off with a stylish lenticular.

We set off again under a clearing sky. It will be a bright afternoon, with the usual expansive views from the top of Toritate-yama. Our snowshoes move more easily now, especially after we pass another large party coming in the opposite direction. Quite literally, we are out of the woods. 

Could it be, though, that we have become addicted to trail-breaking? Something of the morning's mystery and charm seems to be missing when there's an easy track to follow...

A meizanologist's diary (93)

8 January: I’m on the way back from the supermarket with two slices of marinated buri for lunch when – BAM! – the sky lights up pink. The nearly simultaneous thunderclap has me lighting out promptly for the shelter of the Sensei’s porch. 

All day, the graupel showers tumble in from the northwest, accompanied by the occasional thunderclap. At long intervals, a sunny patch races by too. At 4.30 pm, we seize the chance of a lull to take a walk. Up on the windy river bank, it looks as if we’re hiking between lanes of roiling vapour. 

The satellite images on TV show that the clouds are indeed “streeting” all across the Japan Sea. This wild hassle of anvil-wielding cumulus is spilling off North Korea's Mount Paektu (“White Mountain”), explain the weathermen, in a phenomenon known as the Japan Sea Convergence Zone. 

It's a curious freak of nature that the North Koreans' White Mountain (2,744 m) and our very own white mountain, Hakusan (2,702 m) are almost the same height, and that theirs stirs up the winter winds so that ours can be blanketed in snow. The evening forecast calls for half a metre of new snow in the mountains. We’ll see if they're right on tomorrow's walk with the Sensei's colleague…

A meizanologist's diary (92)

4 January: by the time we’ve strapped on our snowshoes, at a leisurely 9.30 am, the sky is already clouding over. 

A few last rays of sunlight come grazing through the trees as we start on the first snow slope. At least, thanks to the late hour, we won’t have to break trail – just follow the trench excavated by all those snowshoes ahead of us.

Low on the ridge towards Genanpo (1,441m) we find a grove of red pines. The trees are in good shape, unlike the devastated grove we saw in Nagano on the way back from Mizugaki last year. Altitude seems to be the key here: the nematode that causes the pine blight prefers an easy life at low levels. 

A fine old tree, warped by a century’s wind and weather, is labelled Nio-no-matsu. It resembles one of those fierce guardians that defend a temple’s gates.

Nearing the treeline, we find ourselves hovering between cloud layers. The view doesn’t last. 

From Maeyama, the vorgipfel, the clouds swirl down on our heads and a chilly wind gets up. 

In driving fog, we cross the summit plateau to find the shrine more than half-buried in snow. Pausing only to pull on an extra jacket, we turn to go down.

The way back, into the teeth of the wind, feels longer than the way in. This is a different place from the one we once visited on a balmy autumn day. We still haven’t picked up a frosted-up landmark that we saw earlier. Doubts start to fester: are we still certain of our position? The Sensei pulls out her phone – yes, Geographica says we’re still on track and we can still just about see the snowshoe tracks on the wind-scoured snow.

Disorientated, off-route, succumbed to exposure … After reminding us how unstructured situations develop in the winter mountains, the weather gives us a break. 

Back on Maeyama, while we pause to tuck into one of the Sensei’s industrial-strength onigiri, the fog blows away to show us the view out to sea. The winter sun is almost warm on our backs, but eastwards Hakusan stays veiled behind the roistering clouds. This is just a lull in a typical phase of our wild and wet back-of-Japan weather...

A meizanologist's diary (91)

2 January: on this second day of the Year of the Snake, it is resolved that we shall pay our respects to the shrine atop Monju, our local Meizan. 

Arriving earlier than last year, we catch the last rays of sun filtering through the approaching cloud. A fine drizzle has started by the time we reach the look-off point at the fifth station: the sun’s rays have already drifted far downwind and are lighting up the cloud layers around Hino-san.

At the summit shrine, the priest must be doing a roaring trade in snake figurines, but we abstain: the Sensei doesn't hold with snakes, whether in effigy or for real. 

Instead we inspect the latest addition to the shrine’s facilities, a bell that you can use to ward off the coronavirus, as seasonally appropriate. 

Just then, a youth attired in judo kit happens by – he’s run up here, through snow and slush, in his bare feet. The spirit of the yamabushi lives. He doesn’t hang around long, though. 

With our own feet shod more comfortably in Wellington boots, we continue over a wooded col towards Monju’s third peak, the so-called Oku-no-in or inner sanctuary. 

Walking round it to inspect the trig point (350 metres), we are mildly reproved by an elderly man who has materialised somehow without our noticing. Don’t you know you should always walk clockwise round a shrine, he asks with a glint of humour in his eyes. 

Monju is admittedly a small Meizan, but there is always something new to learn there…

Exponents of the extreme

Inside the hermetic world of skiing the steepest alpine faces and couloirs.

Extreme skiing is defined, operationally, by the phrase ‘if you fall, you die’. The local scene is explored by an article by Caroline Christinaz in the current edition of the Swiss Alpine Club’s bimonthly journal. In 2016, a documentary entitled La Liste caused a stir: it featured two Valaisian skiers, Jeremie Heitz and Sam Anthamatten, skiing the faces of the Alpine four-thousanders.

Also making an appearance in this film was the pioneer extreme skier Sylvain Saudan, who died last year at the age of 87. In the 1960s, he was the first to publicise feats such as his ski descent of the 55-degree Spencer Couloir on the Aiguille de Blaitière. Even today, says Christinaz, extreme skiers often prefer to keep their activities to themselves or to reveal them only to a small group of insiders.

Fortunately, some steep-face skiers are more talkative than others. Gilles Sierro from Canton Valais is one of them. For him, skiing on steep slopes is a form of artistic expression and a way of practising mountaineering at the highest level. Last year, he skied the north face of the Dent Blanche, which is up to 60 degrees steep, thus completing his long-term project of skiing all the flanks of this mountain.

And in November, together with French colleagues, he skied two new routes on the south face of the Grandes Jorasses. The sport is not an addiction, he says, it’s more of a search. He keeps his binoculars always within reach, because the descent routes reveal themselves only bit by bit throughout the season. It took eleven years until the conditions were ideal to ski the entire north face of the Dent Blanche.

Sebastien de Sainte Marie is from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, but has lived for years in German-speaking Glarus, Chur, Näfels, Zurich, Aarau and Lucerne. Like Gilles Sierro, he has been skiing since he was a child, but he made his first steep descents in the Mont Blanc massif. "When I moved to Switzerland, I realised that you have to earn your descents here, not like in Chamonix, where you reach the steep slopes by cable car. So I learned to climb on foot," he says. And he also saw how discreet everything is in Switzerland: "It happens that a villager makes a descent that he has mooted for years – and perhaps he does it only once and keeps it to mainly to himself."

Skiing the north face of the Lenspitz
Image by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure

Due to its extreme nature, steep skiing is often viewed askance. Andre Anzevui from the Valais, now 69, experienced such incomprehension at an early age: "My father was a mountain guide and earned his living from it. He couldn't understand why I was risking my life on these slopes." Anzevui is the only person to have skied the north face of the Matterhorn, with some sections of 74 degrees. That was in the 1970s, but the scepticism towards steep skiing has changed little to this day. "Among mountain guides, the subject is almost taboo," Anzevui says: "We don't talk about it at meetings."

There is less talk about steep skiing in the German-speaking part of Switzerland than in the French-speaking part. The Lucerne-based mountain guide Marcel Steurer has an explanation: "The trends all come from the West. I myself would never have tackled a steep slope if I hadn't been in Chamonix." Steurer skied the steepest mountain slopes in France and Switzerland at the end of the 1990s, including seven different lines on the Mönch alone. But his achievements attracted little attention in the region.

"The mentality in the Bernese Oberland is different to that in western Switzerland, where the search for extremes is booming,” says Steurer, “In Germany, people are more cautious when it comes to risking lives." ‘Stei’ is now 52 years old and has two children. "I'm more cautious today than I was before," he says. "When I was into steep skiing, I always said that this sport was safe if you approach it properly." He has since changed his mind: "I've had a lot of luck."

References

Summarised from an an article Die Alpen 01/25 by Caroline Christinaz, Schattendasein einer Extremsportart: Steilwandskifahren in der Schweiz (German version).

Forty-two years, 460 peaks

A different kind of mountaineering record from Switzerland’s largest canton.

Graubünden or the Grisons is Switzerland’s largest and easternmost canton. By mean elevation, it is the second highest, with more than a thousand summits, of which 460 rise above 3,000 metres. Until recently, nobody had climbed all of the (permitted) three-thousanders – until, that is, the feat was achieved by Fadri Ratti, a protestant priest.

The idea of climbing all Graubünden’s three-thousanders originated with another local mountaineer, Ruedi Fischer, who compiled a list (four peaks are out of bounds, as they lie within the borders of the Swiss National Park). Fischer himself, however, was unable to complete the set, as were two other climbers who attempted to scale all the peaks during the summer of 2002.

A native “Bündner” now aged 58, Pastor Ratti (right) has officiated at the Protestant church in Felsberg, a community west of the canton’s capital of Chur, for more than two decades. But it took him longer still – forty-two years – to climb all the canton’s three-thousanders. He climbed about two-thirds of the mountains alone, preferably in winter on skis.

Some of the summits are technically demanding: there is the 3,332-metre-high Torrone Orientale, for example, which now needs a snowy winter to facilitate an ascent – the glacier that used to serve as an approach ramp has melted away. For the more challenging peaks, Ratti climbed with a guide, Rolf Trachsel, whom he got to know on Gasherbrum I.

For ever and for ever ... mountains of the Grisons
Image by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure

Back at his workplace, Pastor Ratti’s love of the outdoors has helped him deal with a worry common to most churches in Europe – a dwindling congregation. As a qualified hiking guide, he has been able to conduct marriage services on mountaintops and baptise children on alpine meadows.

In surmounting all his canton's higher mountains, Ratti has achieved a first. But statistics on height and speed are of little interest to him, writes Anita Bachmann, who interviewed him for the Swiss Alpine Club’s bimonthly journal. “Nobody ever asks me whether I have seen animals on my tours, or what the mountains smell like” he is reported as saying – adding that they smell of mushrooms in autumn and alpine roses in early summer.

References

Summarised from an interview with Fadri Ratti in Die Alpen 06/24 by Anita Bachmann, Ein Rekord der anderen Art: 460 Bündner Dreitausender in 42 Jahren (German language).

Photo of Fadri Ratti: courtesy of Anita Bachmann/Die Alpen.