Thursday, Oct 1

Today was another day of hiking. We did a loop up and across a ridge line right from the ryokan where we are staying. All told, the loop was about 10 miles round trip with around 3,700 feet of total elevation gain (2,500 feet up to the first peak and then some up and down across there). Given the varying level of hiking ability in the group, Eric and David came up with a novel way to approach this hike. They each took a group of 7 around the loop in opposite directions. They’ll meet in the middle and then each leader can “sweep” their half of the loop on the way down. Anyone who does not want to do the entire hike can turn around and know one of the leaders will still be behind them. Works well for everyone.

As we were heading out for the hike, Mike L got some good news: they had found his camera! Someone at the ryokan called the bus company for him and, sure enough, it had been turned in. They are actually delivering it to the ryokan this afternoon. Hopefully, a similar fate awaits my camera!

The group I hiked with today included Dave, Mike L, Jim, Samir, Peter and Deb. We’re doing the loop in the clockwise direction which means our first peak is the 1477.5m/4847ft Mt Nyoto. It is a pretty steep climb to the summit right out of the ryokan (2500 feet in 1.5 miles), but the trail is well maintained with tons of steps to go up. There are some great views of Lake Tazawa and the surrounding area. We were fortunate enough to have great weather today: sunny with a high around 65 (I would guess) at the base. Slightly colder, but still nice enough at the summits. In other words, perfect hiking weather. I had actually removed all of my outer layers by the time I got to the top of Nyoto-san (side note: it appears the Japanese add –san to the end of the name when refereeing to some of the more famous mountains).

Unfortunately, I started to get cold after a few minutes of standing around on that summit so I headed out on my own. Samir and Mike L caught up with me a little after that and we continued on together towards the next peak. It was Zarumori and, at 1541m/5055ft, it was the highest peak on our hike. The views along the way were once again fantastic. Looking back towards Nyoto-san, it was pretty impressive with a sheer rock face (that we did not go up or down) just below the summit. We also started to get our first glimpses of the valley on the other side of the ridge. As I said, very nice views.

After we arrived at the summit, I waited about 30 minutes for David. He had waited at the top of Nyoto-san for the rest of the group. When he wasn’t there after 30 minutes, I decided I wanted to continue because it was 11:30 and I wanted to make sure I met up with the group coming from the other side before the 12:30 turnaround time.

Fortunately, that was not hard. I ran into the first members of the other group about 10 minutes after I left the Zarumori summit. The rest of that group wasn’t far behind. We exchanged information about the rest of the hike and then continued on. A short while later, Samir caught up with me and we continued towards the third peak together.

Yumori is the least impressive of the three peaks we did today. At 1471.7m/4828ft, it’s slightly shorter than Nyoto, but that is not why it is less impressive (side note: who measure a peak to seven-tenths of a meter?). It is less impressive because it has a rounded top which makes it hard to get a good view in all directions. The one good thing about this peak was that it had the best view of taller mountains just to the south. Samir and I waited at the top for David and Jim (the other two people who completed the loop from our group). The four of us sat and had lunch before continuing our hike.

Except for some nice views over the next 20 minutes, the rest of the hike was fairly uneventful. There were a couple of tricky parts, but we got below tree line fairly quickly and the views disappeared for the last 4.5km of the hike. The four of us made it back to the ryokan a little after 3 and the other half of the group started to arrive immediately after that. We all agreed this was a really amazing hike.

The remainder of my day was extremely lazy. I cleaned up, sat in the bath for awhile and then took a short walk around the area nearby. We had another excellent dinner and then I sat around writing this, having a beer (I was the only one to get the Kirin “Tall Boy” – 500 mL) and chatting with a couple of other guys in the group. Another great day of hiking.

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