A meizanologist's diary (112)

9 January: Honoke-yama is one of only two mountains in this prefecture to have its name spelled out in katakana. Thus writes Masunaga Michio, the author of One Hundred and Fifty Mountains of Fukui. From the layby where we park, this seems to be the mountain’s only distinction: all we see is a snowy path vanishing into some dreary woods.

Again, I’m about to find that an otherwise lowly eminence has a way of making you take it seriously. We’ve been under way for less than five minutes when the Sensei says we’ve just crossed a set of bear tracks. Aren’t they supposed to be asleep by now? “Probably just waking up for a sip of water and a snack,” she replies.

A snack? Turning up our bear bells to the max, we head up a wooded ridge. Nobody seems to have been here recently, judging by the lack of bootprints along the line of the summer path. 

So it’s a matter of getting our heads down below the overhanging branches and breaking trail through the ankle-deep snow. The low clouds and the woods shut us in.

Others have had it worse. Just after we come out on an aery ridge, a sign tells us the story of a retainer who fled up here following the defeat of the Asakura clan in the second year of Tenshō (1574). 

Realising that, with Hideyoshi’s men in hot pursuit, he’d never make his escape over the pass, the retainer chose to end his life at this very spot. At least from here he would have had one last view of his beloved home mountains.

We munch a sweet potato at a kind of pavilion and eye up the last hundred metres of ascent. It’s getting late. Shall we call it a day here, suggests the Sensei. I demur, feeling that our tour book can’t possibly sustain the disgrace of defeat on a mountain of just 736 metres.

Hurling myself at the final snowslope, I find myself sinking in up to my knees. It’s deep, I whinge. Deep? counters the Sensei: it’s only when we’re ploughing through it up to our chests that we call it deep around here. Near the top, I have to cede the lead to the Sensei, who leads away through a beech grove.

Following her, I'm dimly aware of a band of light to our right. I’m so far gone with the snow-ploughing that, when we reach the top, the Sensei has to point out that it’s the Japan Sea we’re looking at, gleaming dully under the leaden sky. As Masunaga-san points out, Honoke is probably the only mountain in the prefecture where you can see from a single viewpoint the coastal town of Tsuruga, as well as the inland ones of Fukui, Sabae and Takefu.

Then I get it – Honoke-yama means Beacon Peak. In feudal times, they set signal fires up here to superflash the news from province to province. So this is a view that is well worth the effort of wading through some not-unduly-deep snow.