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Kita Alps Day 7

Goshikigahara Hut - Tateyama - Tsurugidake - Kenzansou
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Amazingly, the next day dawned perfectly clear and bright, with none of the light cloud we had experienced all week. In fact I had been starting to doubt whether this sort of truly clear weather really ever happened during summer, as our previous walks had always involved a certain amount of cloud.

 We set off briskly, and rapidly climbed the first hill of the day. Looking south, we could see the small white dot of last night's hut (to the right, near the middle of the plain) with Yakushidake behind it, Kurobegoroudake next and the Yari-Hotaka ridge prominent to the left. I think the peak just left of centre is called Kasagatake, a hyakumeizan which was not quite on our route.
To the north, we could now see the impressively rocky face of Tsurugidake in some detail.


Looking over to Tateyama, we could make out a string of people on the path from Murodo to the Ichi-no-koshi hut and onwards up Tateyama. It looked like it was going to be busy!
We made rapid progress to the Ichi-no-koshi hut, where we had a brief coffee stop and watched aghast at the hordes of day-trippers inching their way up the slope. We stormed off, scattering them left and right, and completed the '1 hour' climb to the summit in about 30 minutes.


The summit itself was not too busy, it seems that by the top we had overtaken most people. There is a Shinto shrine on the first summit of Tateyama, which is called Ooyama. It cost 500Y to visit, and is not on the tallest peak of the mountain, so we skipped it and continued onwards.
Tateyama is an ancient volcanic caldera, with the mountain ridge curved around the Murodo lava plain. Down here there are many huts (with their own natural onsens), a hotel and bus terminal


The highest summit of Tateyama, called Oonanji, had fine views all around. Here is Tsurugidake in the background again. By now, it was starting to look like we might indeed have time to climb it, so we kept pressing on.
From the col, we could see the Kenzansou hut (left of centre) and some of the route from it up Tsurugidake. From here, it was about another hour to the hut, and we checked in just after 12. I asked if we could have a late dinner that night since we were aiming to climb tsurugi that afternoon, but was told there was only one sitting for the evening meal, and anyway there was no way we could climb Tsurugi as it was much too late to set off now. We smiled and nodded, wolfed down some curry rice and set off at 12:45. By this time, there weren't even many people still descending let alone climbing, so we made rapid progress.

Tsurugi really is quite a strenuous scramble with 400m of rocky ascent, but as with the Daikiretto it was wearing more chains than Mr T and for the most part was straightforward. There was, however, one point in particular where we were grateful for the help, on the 'kani no tatebai' (climb up like a crab) where there was a near-vertical cliff with only a few widely spaced bolts to stand on and a chain to hold.

The 'kani no tatebai' runs up the smaller rib a little to the left of tthe large central one in this picture. When we got there, I had too much on my mind to think of taking more pictures! There is a close-up picture on this page here. We also found out (only after returning) that people did actually fall off and kill themselves occasionally (eg mentioned on this page here).

Fortunately, the remaining 100m was little more than a walk and we were soon enjoying the view and munching some more food.



Although the hill was very quiet, we were not entirely alone, with one person already on the summit and another arriving shortly after.

The descent was more straightforward than the climb, partly because we knew what to expect and partly because the 'kani no yokobai' (climb sideways like a crab, the descending route parallel to the tatebai) was nothing worse than a solid ledge to traverse with a chain to hold on to.

Some of the chains really did seem to be rather superfluous!
The biggest remaining challenge was our rapidly fading knees and hips, which were certainly going to be outlasted by the light. We got back to the hut at 4:30pm having taken comfortably under 4 hours for the trip (1:45 each way plus 15 minutes on the top), just in time to hop in another bath and order some well-earned beer to have with dinner. We had been walking quite hard for about 10 hours, and climbed two of the hyakumeizan, in what must be one of the best day's walking we have ever enjoyed.

Another private room made for a relaxing night, although we would probably have slept ok in Shinjuku station!
Having heard the horror stories of long queues and inexperienced people getting stuck on chained sections (plus my own experience of Yari in similar circumstances), I would definitely recommend an afternoon ascent assuming the weather is settled. Judging from how few people were still on the hill at 1pm, even starting off at 11am or so would probably be fine for those who are not so confident about their speed. Packed breakfasts were on offer for those who wanted an early start the following morning: we settled for the leisurely 5:30am option.
Day 1-2
 Day 3
  Day 4
 Day 5-6
 Day 7
 Day 8
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