A wooded ridge leads up to a snowpatch that suckers us into putting on snowshoes. We soon have to take them off again, as most of the snow has melted on the south-facing slopes where the path now takes us. When the snow starts again, I keep my snowshoes off as I am following a series of fresh bootprints.
Unlike this mountain wizard (仙人), as I think of him, I keep sinking into the snow, whether because I am heavier, or because the wizard passed by when the snow was still frozen. Either way, we are in post-holing purgatory: the operative word is “tsubo-ashi”. The Sensei even has to caution me about my language.
By the time that we resort to snow shoes again, my boots are awash with melting snow. Too late, I think of the gaiters riding in the bottom of my pack.
We pull up on the north summit of Takekurabe (964.3 metres) somewhat after noon. Just as we do so, the mountain wizard comes up from the opposite direction – skimming over the snow, he is on his way back from the mountain’s south summit.
Annoyingly, the south summit overtops ours by just over eighty metres. It also sports a hut, although some apparently have murmured that no such refuge should desecrate a summit already dedicated to a shrine of Hakusan Sansho Daigongen.
We gaze over the intervening gap at the south summit and estimate that it would take us another hour or so to get over there and come back. The westering sun reminds us that winter days are short. By the time we decide to go down, the wizard has vanished. We find ourselves walking – or in my case squelching - back over the dam not long before dusk. How did such a lowly mountain take us so long?
In his book on 150 Fukui mountains – why stop at a hidebound one hundred? – Masunaga Michio says that folks like to infer from “Take-kurabe” (“height-measure”) that each of the twin peaks vies with the other to be the highest. This is a common enough theme in mountain mythology. Today, though, I felt that it was my sense of snow conditions that was measured. And, let’s admit it, found a bit wanting.
We gaze over the intervening gap at the south summit and estimate that it would take us another hour or so to get over there and come back. The westering sun reminds us that winter days are short. By the time we decide to go down, the wizard has vanished. We find ourselves walking – or in my case squelching - back over the dam not long before dusk. How did such a lowly mountain take us so long?
In his book on 150 Fukui mountains – why stop at a hidebound one hundred? – Masunaga Michio says that folks like to infer from “Take-kurabe” (“height-measure”) that each of the twin peaks vies with the other to be the highest. This is a common enough theme in mountain mythology. Today, though, I felt that it was my sense of snow conditions that was measured. And, let’s admit it, found a bit wanting.
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| Hakusan from Takekurabe-yama |
1 comment:
Many thanks for reminding me to check your blog!
This was the air quality we were hoping for yesterday! Looks like a fine mountain worthy of exploration.
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