A meizanologist's diary (125)

11 March: What about Genanpo, the Sensei asked yesterday. What, again, I thought. Heck, it once sprang a bear cub on us, and last year a white-out mugged us on the summit. Isn’t twice enough?

The Sensei’s thinking becomes clear when we reach the trailhead. A comfortable number of cars is already parked along the road there. In times when the b-word is buzzing through the media and blogosphere, you don’t want to be too lonely on your chosen mid-week mountain.

And there’s nothing wrong with Genanpo as an excursion. This is how the late doyen of our mountaineering community, Masunaga Michio, introduces it in his One Hundred and Fifty Mountains of Fukui:

As you begin walking south along Sanban-dori in Ono City, the Ginkgo Peak comes into view through the narrow gaps in the street lined with shop signs. And when such a lofty eminence suddenly appears above the bustling city, ridden as it is with human impulses, the summit always attracts my ever-shifting soul.

We start up a flight of wooden steps through the usual factory forest. A few hundred metres up, we meet with new snow over an icy base. Time to put our crampons on. Now the view opens out through gaps in the trees: there’s Hakusan and Arashima too.

Taking a break at the vorgipfel of Mae-yama, we’re overtaken by a woman wearing a pair of rubber boots, the sort you’d wear in your garden or if you work at a fishmonger’s. “Must be a local,” says the Sensei. I watch and learn, in case winter climbing in wellies catches on in the Alps. If it does, remember you read it here first...

A chilly breeze greets us on the summit’s snow dome. Under a cloudless sky, we press on in search of a sheltered spot to eat our sweet potatoes. 

Then we follow a line of bootprints towards the edge of the plateau.

Over there is Heko-san, the next-door peak, looking magnificently alpine in its furbishing of fresh snow. 

I’m starting to understand why Masunaga-san came up here four times in winter, through fair weather and foul. On one occasion, ice had encrusted the trees like molten glass. Like the poet Li Po, he and the mountain never grew tired of each other…

For a moment, we’re tempted to follow those bootprints over the connecting ridge. But winter days are short and mountaineers are slow, especially when they have the salt of age on them. The Sensei and I nod to each other: time to go home. But I suspect we'll be back one of these days...