Pt. 2 Hiking the Northern Japanese Alps. My second Holy Mountain
Continuing on from my last post, I am now at the top of Ryuodake. My friends and I are now making our way back down and stop at the clearing in-between Ryuodake and Mt. Jodo. They are planning on going to Mt. Jodo and then heading down from there to Murodo to catch the bus back. I am now at a crossroad, figuratively and literally. It is my first time up in the mountains and I’m not sure when the next time I will be back as it does cost a decent amount of money for the cable car, bus, and other expenses. Do I continue with my friends or go solo to Oyama to check off holy mountain number two? SPOILER ALERT! - I chose to go to Oyama after some encouragement from the rest of the group.
Like most of my hobbies, I almost never enjoy doing them solo. Whether it be snowboarding, playing video games, or even hiking, I always like to have at least one other person with me to chat with and just BS around with. Before we split, my friend told me that the usual time to summit is around 2 hours. I’m usually slower because even though I enjoy hiking and snowboarding, I don’t do much training and I feel like I’m not really in great shape. At the very least, I don’t have much stamina and am usually out of breath way before my legs give out. My friend told me it would be around 2 hours to summit and then I had to factor in around 20 extra minutes for the walk back to Murodo on the path. However, I didn’t have much time left before the buses would leave. This mean I really had to push through and not slow down.
The way up wasn’t too bad, albeit kind of steep in some areas. Once at the top, I stopped to get a few pictures of the shrine at the top and a plaque. Some other hikers who were setting up to cook some instant noodles were nice enough to snap a few pictures for me, and then I made my way back down. Just as I started to descend, the weather took a turn for the worse. Snow flurries started at the top, which would eventually turn into rain as I got lower and lower on the mountain. I don’t mind the snow, but I wasn’t really prepared for the rain. I had a windbreaker jacket which helped a little, but just like my backpack that I was using, it turned out to not be waterproof. Finding that out on the mountain wasn’t great. My only solace was that I was heading back to the station and I would be able to shelter from the rain. I had managed to ascend and descend all within 2 hours and was making great time.
Snow flurries at the top of Oyama
On my way back I saw a group of people stopped on the path huddled up. I thought that was very strange seeing as most people would not want to be standing in the rain while hiking. I made my way over to them and it was then that I realized what all of the commotion was about. It was the prefectural bird, right there within arm’s reach - the raicho! (雷鳥 lit. thunder bird) I consider myself lucky as some people live here their whole lives never seeing one in person outside of the zoo, and I had somehow stumbled upon two of them. I’ve been told that they are active during times of bad weather and rain so perhaps having the weather change on me was not completely terrible after all. It was the pick-me-up that I needed to make it the rest of the way back to the station without caring about being caught in the downpour. My adventure up into the Northern Japanese Alps had come to an end and I made my way back down with the bus and cable car.
