Mountain Views

3rd time lucky with the weather on Kita Dake, Japan's 2nd highest mountain.

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Mountain Wildlife

The reader will be pleased to hear that we are nearing the end of the mountain photos.

Sometimes I think we should sneak more quietly through the mountains in order to see more wildlife but we generally walk quite noisily so as to avoid being eaten by the lions, tigers and bears. The Japanese mostly carry bear bells, or even radios. I bet the mother bears get really fed up of the cubs hankering after the latest noise-making gizmo.

Shika - Deer.

Raicho - Ptarmigan.
Hebi - Snake.

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Mountain stream

On the tops of the mountains water is scarce with just the occassional spring. So after four days of trekking, descending down to 2300m this hut feels like an oasis, with its snazzy onsite water feature (a natural stream runs by the side of the hut). The experience is made 10 times better by the horrible rarity in Japan of any kind of stream or river that is not covered in concrete. We arrived early enough to go on photo safari. The lighting assistant was in charge of holding and adjusting the vari-ND filter.

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Mountain huts

As previously mentioned, all the mountain huts serve beer. But they do not all have much in the way of bedding or room to sleep. However, the hut staff often find some extra space to put James in, and as we were out of the peak season we did not have too much trouble this time.

First, some huts that we didn't stay at... on the ridge before Kita Dake (2nd highest mountain in Japan) summit.

Then this one is down the other side of Kita Dake.

Later we got to sleeping bag on wooden boards territory (we were ready and took thermarests this time!). But it is quite a picturesque hut, and it was from here that this view was taken at dawn (4:30am) the next day.

This one is a favourite, and one of the main reasons I wanted to do the walk again. Still not enough bedding, but a lovely location by a steam and plenty of excellent food.

And here we are on the last night, waiting for people to pile in next to us. As you see, the big foreigners are put in one corner, and then other people are filled in from the other corners, so that the space next to us is the last to be filled. Eventually, the Olympic snoring champion arrived and took the spot, although there was still space for 3 or 4 Japanese between us and him.

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Blue bell alpine flowers

The alpine flowers put us clumsy humans into perpective by growing in inaccessible places. I suppose we can still metaphorically tread on them through our climate changing activities, but they are probably in more immediate danger from the collapsing mountains. It was quite interesting how much of the path we trod 7 years ago through the Minami Alps has now disappeared over the cliffs. A Tokyo University geologist once told me that the mountains are going up faster than they are falling down, but it doesn't seem like it when you are there.

My Japanese flower book says there are a number of kinds of these little blue bell flowers, but I can't tell them apart. James is the expert at photographing them.

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Mountain Flowers

A week of bright sunshine made for tricky flower photography, saved by the technical lighting assistant and his magic hat.

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More Fuji-san

I have been wondering why the good people of flickr so much prefer this photo to the two I posted last week. I wouldn't say it's exactly "gone viral", but I don't self-promote my pix much, so 1700 views, 31 favourites, 12 comments, 1 gallery, an appearance on flickr's "explore" and on something called "reddit" are unheard of. I like the minimalism of the other two pictures, the colours, and the way they go together well (which doesn't come across on a single-pic-view site like flickr), despite being taken from different places.

But the crucial thing may be that the the first two photos seem to me to be an improvement over the origial view. Meanwhile, the goal of the third photo was to capture the layers of hills and cloud leading to Fuji-san. I thought I'd nailed it at the time, but now I think the original view was more wonderful. So that makes me pleased with the former pics and slightly disappointed with this one. Nevertheless, I guess I'll have to print it out and see how it looks on the wall.

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Mountain resources

The mountain water comes out of the ground (via dodgy looking pipes),

but at 3000m, the coffee comes in china cups.
Provisions are brought in by helipcopter, but beer is available at every hut.
Here are all the requirements for a relaxing post-walk afternoon tea... sake, coffee, chocolate, nuts and map.

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Fuji-san

We walked the Minami (South) Alps from North to South, which is towards Fuji-san. From about half way through the walk, it was visible for much of the time.

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black and yellow and buzzy

Little hoverflies buzz over the alpine flowers, although not usually in this density. There were also bigger hoverflies.
And then there were these: James had seen a hornet warning at the bottom of the mountain path. And this caused us to notice the yellow and black stripyness of the enormous things buzzy around us every few minutes along the path. But Asian hornets are a like Fuji-san in the sense that they are so massive and dramatic that when you see the real thing you know it. And the behaviour of these didn't seem quite the same. Hornets can hover but they tend to fly with motivation - i.e. angrily towards something. These were sitting near the path and would loop, or figure of eight the two of us, 2-10 times as we walked past their territory. The best we could come up with was that they were stripped down happy mountain hornets. However, after return and much Googling, I found a British reference to a "hornet mimic hoverfly". And cropping my photo (I didn't want to get too close!) reveals a relatively smaller face, bigger eyes, and, crucially, the lack of bee-crushing mandibles, and inclusion of some kind of stabbing mechanism. They were, however, absolutely huge, but then so are our hornets, so I guess they have upped their game compared to the European ones...

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