A meizanologist's diary (45)

30 October: as it’s a Monday, only the leisured classes can visit the mountains. Almost everyone in the group is retired, including our leader, the president of the local mountaineering club. By the same token, we are all – as Falstaff so eloquently put it – if not clean past our youth, then with some smack of age in us.

The president is leading us up his local “Hausberg”, Nosaka-dake, this time by its western ridge. In the cool morning air, we gain height at the kind of stately but steady pace favoured by the best Swiss guides.

The view out over Tsuruga bay has already started to expand when we pass a sign to a “pilgrim’s rock” (Gyōja-iwa). Could it be that this mountain has more of a history than it lets on at first acquaintance?

Emerging onto the wooded summit ridge, we look in vain for the woods of autumn. Here and there a maple tree, or some of its leaves at least, have assumed their customary scarlet. For the most part, though, the trees look drab, as if uncertain of the season.

Arriving on top in less than guidebook time, I realise that we’ve just received a masterclass on how to go about mountaineering when starting to relish the saltness of time. 

Taking advantage of the warm sun – though it is a pity about the kōyō – we distribute ourselves around the summit marker to eat our rice balls and sweet potatoes; four years ago, a chill wind drove us into the refuge hut.

Small wonder that Nosaka-dake boasts one of those prestigious primary triangulation points. For a mountain of just 914 metres, the views are spacious – northwards, to the Japan Sea’s horizon and, to the south, more like a sea than a lake, the glinting shield of Biwa-ko. From here, you could easily credit the legend that Mt Fuji was built from the spoil left from digging out the lake.

Reluctantly, we start down. This time, we’ll do a traverse, descending via a ridge on the mountain’s north side. The beech woods have been cleared here, to make way for a line of pylons distributing electricity from Tsuruga’s nuclear power stations. 

But it is right under one of these steel intrusives that we find a community of autumn gentians. They seem to like it out here, under an open sky.