Silver Week Hiking in Tateyama

I have written on this blog before about hiking in Japan. I enjoy it and am very lucky to be in the middle of the Japan Alps and have so many places to hike. The mountains I have climbed in Japan, though quite high, have not been too challenging in that you don't need any specialist equipment (other than boots) or training. My friend Japan Hiking invited me on a three day hike through some of the toughest terrain in Japan. I jumped at the chance so during Silver Week, a coincidence of national holidays that creates a five day weekend every six years, Japan Hiking, his fiance, a Japanese friend of ours and myself set off.

The start and finish of our hike was the Kurobe dam, Japan's biggest. It is hard to imagine how this huge public works project ever happened. It took thousands of workers, billions

of dollars and decades to make this massive dam in the middle of nowhere and now as well as producing electricity it is an unlikely tourist attraction. We camped the first night near the Dam. I lost paper, scissor, rock and had to camp in undergrowth whilst everyone else had nice, flat pitches.

The next day we hiked from a starting height of 1500m up to 3000m and the top of Tateyama. You can take a cable car for most of the ascent

but we skipped that and hiked it to the surprise of the day trippers we bumped into. After we

followed the ridge and then hiking down to our campsite at 2500m we had walked for ten hours and I was exhausted. I had lugged some beers up the mountain and we drank them that evening and they tasted lovely and well deserved.

The next day was no let up. In the morning we climbed up Tsurugi dake. We dropped off our bags at the base and set off. The route was the most difficult I've ever climbed. Rocks mostly with 20 chain rope sections where it gets too steep to simply clamber up. The weather was rainy but perhaps that was a blessing since it wasn't crowded with people and you cou

ldn't see the sheer drops below. A few frayed nerves and along the way but we made it to the summit at 2999m and back. Having long legs made up for lack of climbing experience on this section and I enjoyed it a lot though it was a lot harder than I thought. We reunited with our bags, had lunch and then continued towards the next campsite. In between us and there was a 大雪渓 or snow valley. I was looking forward to this part the most and I had

bought crampons especially for it. By chance there were a couple of mountain patrol men on the same path. The warned us the snow had collapsed in the middle and showed us where to get on. Otherwise we would have been stuck in the middle of the snow and would've had to waste hours trudging back and around. There were amazing views down the snow valley and hiking with crampons proved to be easy enough.

The final day we hiked back to the Kurobe Dam. The path wasn't well used and proved to be a maze of ladders, ropes, rickety bridges and not flat at any point. In fact the whole hike was not flat at any point over difficult terrain. It was a

real challenge. I couldn't have done it without the help of the experienced climbers with me. Carrying a backpack with my tent and gear for three days added to the difficulty as well. All in all it was a hard but amazing hiking trip.