Up on Shakotan Dake

Today I climbed a mountain with my boss and a band of aging Japanese mountaineers. I'd been wanting to climb this particular mountain, which I can almost see from my house, since very soon after I arrived. In his continuing tradition of taking me on interesting adventures, my boss arranged the whole thing with a local climbing/hiking group, and we set out at 7:30 on Sunday morning. The weather couldn't have been better, and we were able to make it up in 4 hours, take about an hour for lunch at the top, then back down in 2 hours. Here's a cross section of the kinds of things you run into on a mountain:

Climbing Shakotan Dake with Jicho, I knock a staccato rhythm on the rocks with my bamboo cane as I cross. But it sounds a little more hollow than I’d hope: like there might be caves down there hiding Tanuki or Tengu.

At altitude, birch trees grow low and twisty like mangroves, more horizontal sprawl than towering pillar. Looking down on the world from on high gives vertigo impressions of concavity, of the earth curling up beneath you, and you out over it, until you might just be able to glimpse the unders of rocks.

From up there, where we break for lunch on the peak, we glimpse the standard hallmarks: the now-old friends: Yotei, Niseko An’nupuri. The near-centenarians in our group prove hardier and more versatile than I: cracking beers and lighting tiny gas stoves to cook themselves sumptuous summit suppers. I gulp down water for the heat and onsetting headache, and I dine on the lembas bread of the Japanese: Onigiri. Rice balls wrapped in seaweed with protein-packed, fishy cores.

Up here: still snow, but there’s a change of scene in the green. The Hills of Hokkaido, more Amazon or Andes, and not the Japanese Northern Outpost. No longer the birthplace of winter.

From up on Shakotan Dake, Furubira behind us is barely visible. The elevated plain could be an island in the sky, for at its cliff edges the low-lying coast is overlaid with kiri: low-lying mist that sits like clouds. Throughout the day, it recedes slightly, and we can catch sight of our town, of neighbouring Bikuni. However, by the time we shamble back down the mountain, sweaty and spent, and drive back down to the coast, the kiri is as thick and grey as ever, and it shrouds us in on our way to the onsen.