A meizanologist's diary (96)

20 January: no need to worry about snowshoes, the Sensei said last night, this is just a day hike up a 400-metre hill. Still, the hill in question looks impressive enough as it rears into the morning mists drifting over from Lake Biwa. 

There must be some good reason that our club’s president has selected it for a mid-week Wanderung in a neighbouring prefecture – I mean, surely we have mountains enough of our own back home.

Walking through a large torii, we start up a steep set of stone steps. These lead up to a rocky platform surmounted by a granite tor and, tucked into a recess beside it, a small pavilion dedicated to the Eleven-Headed Kannon. The fog has started to clear, so that we can look down onto the surrounding rice fields and factories. This part of Shiga Prefecture feels crowded compared with our own inaka.

We continue along a wooded ridge – although the preposition “along” seems to embrace a prodigious amount of “up” and “down” as well. Lunch is taken on a col after surmounting one of these interim peaklets. 

Then, restored by our rice balls, we tackle another set of well-made steps up to a shrine dedicated to the rain god – as depicted in the form of the dragons holding up the peak sanctuary’s shingled roof. 

Exquisitely carved as they may be, these effigies don’t seem to be a Sehenswürdigkeit worthy of our three-hour drive this morning. What could our president be thinking of when he chose this destination?

As we happen to be walking side by side, I think of asking him but we are distracted by the discovery of a cricket’s moulted husk lying on the trail – as if to recall Bashō’s haiku about the cricket chirping from under the fallen warrior’s helmet.

It’s curious to find such a relic of summer on “Daikan”, the Great Cold of January, which happens to fall today. The sun comes out, and jackets come off, as we walk out onto a south-facing terrace. Behind us, surmounting a natural cliff, are the remains of a huge wall, built of irregularly shaped blocks.

A distant rumbling reaches our ears. On the plain below, two bullet trains are passing each other. This must be the Tokaidō Shinkansen: so we have traversed the whole of Kinugasa-yama from north to south. I see that we are strolling through the ruins of what must once have been a puissant castle. Whoever commanded these heights would have controlled the main route between east and west Japan.

Passing through the remains of a postern gate back into the forest, we walk up into a grove of flowering sazanka trees. Admiring how the blooms of this “winter camellia” glow crimson in the warm sunlight, it takes me a moment to appreciate that the trees are hemmed around by the walls of a great hall or courtyard. Whoever built this castle evidently found themselves on the wrong side of history. 

A placard enlightens us. It was apparently one Niwa Nagahide (1535–85) who reduced this fortress for the last time, bringing to an end the rule of a local warlord. Local traditions still point out the ravine into which fled the garrison’s women and children. Were the sazanka trees planted as a memorial to them?

I’m still lacking the big picture – who attacked whom, when and why. But January days are short, even if Daikan lacks its traditional bite, and we need to get down before dark. A long flight of steps takes us down to an old temple, whose gate-keeper mulcts us of a few trumpery coins for the privilege of using the stone-flagged path.

The walk to the nearest station takes half an hour, during which a few raindrops spot down from the late-afternoon cumulus build-up. While waiting for the 15.56 local train back to our starting point, I notice we’re on the platform of the JR Azuchi station.

“Is this the same Azuchi that figures in the Azuchi-Momoyama period?” I ask. That’s right, confirms K-san, Azuchi stands for Nobunaga, and Momoyama for Hideyoshi: Niwa Nagahide stormed the castle because it got in Nobunaga’s way on his march to Kyoto. The country could not be unified until Nobunaga could walk in triumph through its gates... 

There’s standing room only on the train, as schoolchildren have occupied all the seats. After all, this is a weekday and the country has been at peace for eight decades.

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...