If you would like to experience high Alpine summits in the northern hemisphere summer without having to engage in technical climbing, Japanese mountains offer an unmatched combination of easy trailhead access by public transportation, an extensive trail system, many conveniently located and superbly managed mountain huts, and outstanding vistas. In my mountaineering dotage, and as a parent of a young child, I’ve become fond of brief excursions to these mountains to (hopefully) bequeath an enthusiasm for high places and to enjoy the pleasures of the hills when leisure time is severely limited. That said, Japan now suffers from unstable mid-summer weather due to anthropogenic global warming, and one has to time backcountry excursions with careful regard to rapidly changing meteorological conditions. You obviously don’t want to get killed by a thunderstorm when above treeline, but even transport from the trailhead back to civilization may become disrupted by the now unpredictable monsoon.
This past July found us in Japan, and there seemed to be a 36-hour window of fair weather between storms. We chose to attempt Yakushidake, a 2962 m mountain, as an overnight trip. We planned to sleep in the Yakushidake hut, which is located at 2700 m, an hour or so below the summit. My son and I made the ~11 km, 1350 m-elevation gain hike-in on a Saturday morning. We arrived in the hut by early afternoon, above a glorious sea of clouds rising from the sweltering plains bordering Toyama Bay. Next morning, we left the hut at 3:30 to summit the mountain at dawn. I had with me an OM System OM-5 micro four thirds camera with the Panasonic 8-18 mm f/2.8-4 zoom. Thanks to the image stabilization in the camera, I could hand-hold this snap to the south. Two hikers arrived at the broad summit shortly after us and provided additional visual interest to the photograph. The sharp peak near the center of the photo is Yarigatake (the ‘Matterhorn of Japan’), and you can see Mt. Fuji in the horizon just to its left. As you can infer from the headlamp of one of the climbers, it was perceptually darker than in the post-processed photo. I should add that we descended the mountain in a hurry after this, and made it safely to the trailhead by noon, just before the heavens parted.
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