OKU-HOTAKA DAKE (3190M)

OK. Let's take a raincheck on this one. I'm nearly 9000 ft up in the Japanese Alps; on my own - last people I saw were heading down an hour ago; there's about 1/2 hour of daylight left; I've lost the track; and I'm stuck on a scree. Above me the cloud is swirling down and there's no sign of the supposed hut. Hmm. Perhaps I should've listened to the hut-girl at the Karasawa hut, now 800ft below...

I got to Karasawa at 14.40 after a beautiful 6 hour or so walk from Kamikochi (a high Alpine valley) via Yokoo-sanso, now way down in the lower valley, first following the Asuza-gawa river, then branching off to the West to ascend ever more steeply. The trail is well-marked with white paint circles on rocks and trees. The first mark I saw, a red 'O' with a yellow 'O' inside it I thought meant 'no entry' or 'tree due for the chop', then decided it meant 'do not smoke the trees' - which I had no intention of doing anyway. The hut-girl, who'd passed me twice, once on her way down the mountain, once on her way back up again ("I just felt like going for a walk to the bridge"!!) told me that it got dark at 5pm and that I should stay the night at Karasawa, get up early the next morning for the summit of Hataka, then go back down the same way as it'd take me 2 1/2 hrs to get up to the Hataka-dake-sanso hut. In any case, she said, the path over the peak then down the other side was not recommended. 'OK,' I thought, and settled down in the hut.

5 minutes later the mountain jerked me to my feet, I told the hut-girl I was going on, and left. What was I supposed to do for the next 1 3/4 hrs anyway? Look at her? Drink tea? If I didn't get up that night it'd blow my schedule anyway, I wouldn't get back down to Kamikochi before 4 or 5pm and not make Tokyo till very late. Then there's the 3rd or 4th Law of Mountain Walking which says: "Always gain as much height as you can when you can!" I forget the 1st, 2nd and 3rd ... probably one of them is: "Do not get yourself stuck on a bloody high mountain you don't know with dark falling and no trace of a path (!)". Another one certainly is: "If you have to cross a high mountain scree, keep those knees high and KEEP MOVING!" Except, of course, I could only make 5 or 10 yds before collapsing in exhaustion. Hmm...

I suppose it sounds boastful to say I wasn't afraid, but I wasn't - well, only somewhere round the edges. Something inside was quite coolly calculating the percentages: 'let's see now, you just passed a ruddy big rock with a slight concavity on the downhill side - if you are forced to bivowak then you should survive in there with all your clothes on until it gets light enough to move again'; 'it's full moon tonight, the cloud should clear with dark falling, you'll be able to see enough even after dark to continue on'; 'that ridge to your right ... if you follow it down you'll hit the path at some point'; 'the sketch map in the guide shows the main path I'm supposed to join following the top of the ridge I'm most of the way up - so long as you go straight up you have to hit it at some point'. Was I heading up for the right col at all? Well, I know I've got Hotaka on the left and some other peak on the right. I know I've got Karasawa immediately below. Also, the scree seems to be 'rounding off' not too far above me. I get my Indian Scout headdress on and scour the scree for clues: a scrap of plastic sticks out between the rocks, a bit of rope ... ah ha - a piece of glass from a beer bottle. Now, in general, the Japanese do not litter. I've seen none on the trail so far. So the fact that there are a few scraps here, and especially the beer bottle, would indicate a certain congregation of humans directly above. It might have been a will-o'-the wisp, but I thought I Aalso heard a mechanical noise way above my head some time ago, straight up. I'll continue up to where the scree rounds off and see what I can see.

I get off the scree onto the ridge to my right, pull myself up on rocks and tough, wiry grass, panting, then have to cross it again to what looks like a slightly more stable area. Don't set the whole thing in motion, that would be a megazaster! Peaks rimmed in settting sun. Seemingly solid rocks shift, slide away under my feet. Rest every time I reach a seemingly solid bit, then scutter on to the next. Get to place where it flattens off a bit and poke my head over the top: right in front of me, Hakata-dake-sanso, the hut.

Is it a mirage? I gasp up the last few metres of scree, clamber onto the wall and walk into the hut. The warden greets me and I register for the night. 7,300 yen with evening meal (about £37). An American, Scott, appears and greets me, too. Turns out he was an English teacher in Kyoto, saw an ad for a hut warden and got the job. Outside it's getting dark by the second, so I go and check the downtrail to see where the hell I got off it. Doesn't seem to be clear, tho', whether it, in fact, hugs the ridge I scrambled up or actually goes down the scree. But I can't believe the couple I saw much much earlier could have got down the scree - if it started to go you'd slide along with a road of locks till you hit Davy Jones Rocker ... or the Karasawa Hut anyway, 1000ft below. I go round the back of the hut to look West, see if there are any dragons.

The luminescent horzon is striated in bands of apricot, crystal, adamantine, chrysophagic chalcedony; merging into pumpkin, ortanique, deepest Muscat. And there are dragons. Their pimply snouts stick out above the sea of fluffy-wedding cloud, they bear the names Yari-dake, Tsurugi-dake, Onanji-yama...

Go in for dinner, join Japanese couple at table. Many, especially young Japanese women, have this very impulsive and playful demeanour. Sink 10 cups of green tea, 4 of black, hang out in the library, which has a very nice collection of climbing and mountain walking books and a gas heater. It was 6 degrees at Kamikochi and it's hovering around freezing up here. The hut is perched on a narrow col between Oku-hataka-dake, 3190m (you get to call it the familiar 'Hataka' once you've earned the right), and Karasawa-dake, 3110m, and, surprisingly, doesn't seem to get blown off by the icy blasts of winter or shrugged off by a twitch of the dragon's shoulder. It's got a heated toilet seat! Wow, I'm sitting on a heated toilet seat in a mountain hut at 3000m up in the Japanese Alps! The hut guys have gone crazy outside and are dancing around with sparklers and fireworks. I ask Scott if there's something to celebrate and he says, nah, it's just the isolation and altitude. It sends them nuts. If it had gone dark before I got up, the flashes would've guided me in right on the nose... Scott says the hut's closing for the season next week, he's off back to the Useless States of Amerikee to work in a department store or something for the winter, then back in April to reopen the hut. It'll take me 8 hours to go over Hotaka and down the other side to Kamikochi, he says, so I'll need an early start. I'm lucky - they usually have snow by mid-September up here. I'd never have made it if there'd been any. Roll out my futon on the sleeping platform along with the other overnighters, note with approval that it's mixed sex, pull nice thick quilt over me and attempt to sleep.

DRINGGGGG! Or, actually, lack of DRINGGGGG! I'd set my alarm for exactly 4.59 and I woke up at exactly 4.58. 'Mountain calling, this is your morning call! Hey, Hotaka here! Wanna see the sunrise from my top? Then get your great hairy arse outta the sack and get yer boots on!' Uh. Oh. Uff. I'd packed the night before, so within 10 minutes said goodbye to the hut, slid the door open and walked out into darkness with the faintest glimmering of light. The initial climb out of the col is more of a scramble, up freezing cold iron ladders, hanging onto chains, clutching rocks, but then eases off. The East is aglow in peach over a roil of cottonwool, the cloud layer being at least 1000ft below me. Peaks jut darkly out of the cloud-sea, one an active volcano with a black, wind-drifted plume of smoke parrallel to the horizon. I round a shoulder of Hotaka and suddenly see, perfectly framed by the mountain and a slope: FUJI! Surely it must be? No other mountain is so high and so perfectly cone shaped... she beckons incandescently out of shifting opalescent lamella even Hokusai's deftness could never reproduce accurately



To those who dare
wholly unexpected treasure is granted:
Fuji-san from Hotaka!

Hit peak finally just after 6am, just as the sun explodes over the horizon. I'm the third highest man in Japan (presuming someone's up the 2nd highest, surely someone'll be up Fuji)! Totally on my own. Funny, in this oh-so-crowded archipelago I've nearly always been on my own. Sunrise at Oku-hakata-dake, 3190m, 6.14 am, Thursday 20th October, 2005. A moment to treasure for the rest of my life. I take pictures then share the 'Gipfelwasser' with the mountain god (a jar of sake I'd bought in Matsumoto). More a German custom? 'Gipfelwasser = 'peak water' ie a Schluck of alcohol when you climb a peak): oblation on rocks in front of his shrine / cheers, old fellow! / mouthful for me / left rest for him. 2 Japanese guys from the hut now climbing up to join me, I greet them, say 'Yaboo, sucks, you missed the sunrise you lazy sons of guns you should've got up a bit earlier!' (well, play-act); they grin. I head off down to Mae-hotaka-dake to the SW, which is 300ft lower. It's a perfect day now, but I'm still grateful for the waymarkings - they add an 'X' to indicate 'NOT this way!'. The 'Daikiretto', which, according to the Lonely Planet 'Hiking in Japan' guide, is 'the most exhilarating (or the scariest) bit of hiking in Japan that does not require any specialist skills', is only a few miles north of where I was. It adds a skull and crossbones marking to indicate that those who went that way went the way of all flesh... you 'drop from 3033m to 2748m at the bottom of the hole, then back up to 3106' and there are 'steel laddders, chains and BIG drops'. I had been regretting not having 3 days to do this stretch as well, but as the Lonely Planet guide seems to be written for Jaunty Young Things With a Spring in their Step and a Song in their Hearts who vault from rock to rock over death-defying precipices like mountain goats, yodelling at the same time, not for middle-aged slowpokes like moi, I am now glad I didn't bite of more than I can chew. Their classification system needs redrafting for oldies: 'easy' means 'middling'; 'normal' means 'steep'; 'steep' means 'terrifying'; and 'exhilarating' means 'brown pants time'. I also consider recommending them to classify 'walks' as 'a one banana hike (1B)', two banana hike (2B)', 'three bananas' etc, judging by my rate of consumption. They'll probably conclude I'm a few bananas short of a bunch myself.

I reach, but do not ascend Mae-hotaka-dake (it'd take another 40 minutes and I'm worried about making an early bus from Kamikochi). The way ahead looks precipitous, but then I look back at what I've just come over, which looks even worse! Perhaps, as with so much of life, we project anxiety, whereas, step-by-step, it just somehow gets done. People, too, like the hut girl at Karasawa, will always try to get you to do 'what is best for you', they 'have your best interests at heart': avoid them, side-step them, and do what you need to do! When I have to make a decision I will make that decision and live with the consequences. That's a deal you make all the time, it's just more immediate and nearer in high mountains.

The trail turns West and drops. So this is what Lonely Planet considers 'steep'. It is, but there's no exposure and the rock is solid. Again, the too-steep bits have chains or iron ladders. The sun is gradually creeping into the Dake-sawa Valley in front of me, I can see the red-roofed Dake-sawa Hut crouched next to a dry river bed far below, then further, all the way down to Kamikochi nestled alongside the skein of the Asuza-gawa river. The sun gradually flattens the world out from that crisp, new, early morning sharpness, jagged arete against pumpkin dawn, black shadows on skeletal trees. I stop to take pictures but my battery proclaims it's 'exhausted'. Well, so am I, mate, but I gotta get down this here mountain! I take the battery out and stick it in an inside pocket to warm up, upon which it allows me a few more pictures.



Sit on rock and wait for 2 guys to chug slowly past. The first one sees me at the last minute and immediately strikes up a conversation in English. 'He's old,' he says, 'not so fast anymore.' They spent the night at Dake-sawa and are heading up the way I've come, over Hotaka, down to the Karasawa Hut for that night. 'Old' or not, I'm impressed. Mr First-Friendly takes some pictures of me on my rock and promises to email them to me at home in England (he does). His companion gives me some spicy sweets. I have my second meal of the day (bread, blueberry jam, German sausage, squashed banana), rehydrate with hut water and continue the unremitting descent to eventually arrive at the Dake-sawa Hut where I have the third meal of the day (bread, blueberry jam, German sausage, squashed banana). More of my front tooth breaks off. Nod to lone Ozzie woman hiker with massive backpack - she also spent the night at the Hotaka Hut, but in her tent (! obviously a mere toddle for her, this 'walk'!), recross boulder-strewn river course and gradually wind down through moss-crept pine, cedar and cryptomeria forest to where the track gives onto a tourist trail along the limpid sidestreams of the Asuza-gawa. Turn left, decide after 10 minutes it's wrong, ask some tourists and they say 'bus station right (nitwit)!', retrace my steps and stagger down to the Kappa-bashi Bridge. You can scarcely see any water for the swarms of day-trippers, photographing each other in front of the sights, painting watercolours on the river beach, picknicking, buying souvenirs. Roll finally into the bus terminal at 12.40, so it's taken me 7 1/2 hours from the Hotaka Hut, nearly the 8 Scott said. Book next bus out (13.20), usual bus confusion but eventually get on right one which links to train at Shinshimashima, fall asleep.

After usual Japanese frightening efficiency arrive in Matsumoto at 15.17 where I book my onward bus ticket to Shinjuko, Tokyo for 16.20 (3,400 yen = £17), buy some rice crackers etc to take back to England, pick up the rest of my luggage from the locker I'd left it in 2 days earlier and catch bus. 3 1/2 hours later I'm disgorged onto the streets of Tokyo - another planet, I can tell you! - beneath 55 floor superscrapers. Muddle my way via JR and the Yamanote Line to Ikebukuro and pitch up at the pre-booked Kimi Ryokan, a world away from the domain of the mountain gods. The next day Mike and Yoko take me to the site of Basho's old hut alongside the Sumidagawa (river) in the days when 'Tokyo' was called 'Edo' and was further to the West, around the 3 rivers which flow into Tokyo Bay. So at the end I come to the beginning, where Bassho started out in the Spring of 1689.

At the end
the beginning
bubble-eyed hyper-cruiser takes Basho upriver

I fart around with American Express (again). 'If you want to withdraw money press 1; if you want to speak to an operator, press 2; if you're stranded in Tokyo with no money because American Express won't give you any in spite of the fact that there's lots on the card then go to hell...' This so exhausts me (American Express website locks me out, have to phone America) and puts me in such a bad mood that I can't deal with Tokyo W-2-W crowds as well, so don't see any of the sights; do some shopping, go for great walk with Mike in some hills just out of Tokyo. Leave Kimi Ryokan 6.15am 24 October, take train to wrong terminal (KLM flies from Terminal 1, not 2! Can't you read? R-2-R exchange), free bus to right terminal, get on plane. 13 hours later I'm 1/2 hour late into Schiphol, Amsterdam, so rush to catch connection to Bristol in 20 minutes. 16.30 local time, 00.30 Tokyo time. Home.

Need to thrash my son at tennis
clean kitchen floor
hope my wife hasn't found out she doesn't need me