TGW | The Daily Mumble August 2002 Archive

Thursday 1st August 2002 - 20:35(GMT+9) Niseko, Japan

I was hoping to give the August edition of The Daily Mumble a kick start, with a great story of a victorious expedition to the peak of the island of Hokkaido. Funny how things never quite go to plan...

Yotei San (Mt. Yotei) stands tall and proud in the south-western corner of Hokkaido, begging to be climbed. With but four weeks left in Japan, yesterday I decided that the time had come to conquer it's lofty heights.

My boss told me that most people climb 9/10ths of the way up in the early evening (usually setting out at 7pm), sleep in the mountain hut from 11pm to 3am, and then get up in order to reach the summit for the 4am sunrise.

So it was that a little later than scheduled (10.30pm) I set out, alone, with a small torch (flashlight), plenty of chocolate and three litres of bottled water.

I've never been so scared in my life! With most of Yotei San being coated in a dense forest, there was no natural light. It was very quiet too, except for the constant breaking of twigs by the monsters that were ceaselessly creeping up on me from all directions. At one point I got very scared and tried to phone my girlfriend for comfort and reassurance - alas! There was no signal!

The path that I took must have been marked out many years ago, before the invention of the zigzag. It was so steep, and literally followed a straight course from the bottom to the top. After two-and-a-half hours of non-stop climbing, I finally broke out into the open scrubland. Boy was I glad to have survived the forest - perhaps the monsters were put off eating me by the stink of the sweat that had been gushing from my every pore.

It was 1.15am when I reached the mountain hut. Having checked in and payed my 800yen, I stripped off my sodden clothes and settled down to grab 90 minutes shut-eye in my cosy sleeping bag, with the zip that doesn't do up, it was definitely not like staying in a blackpool hotel but you take what you can get.

Two cold hours later I forced my legs back to work, and set out on the final hike to the summit, which I reached within 25 minutes.

The view was... misty. Foggy. Couldn't see a damn thing! Hhhmm. What does one do having reached the top of a volcano? Walk around the crator I guess - so that's just what did. It was pretty treacherous going. The rim was very narrow in places, with a drop on either side that could easily be classed as lethal. As I made my way around to the East, so the cloud began to lift, offering a brief view of the lake in the crator to my left, and the western coast of Hokkaido to my right (apparantly). It was during this brief spell of "good" weather that I took a couple of photos:


The big white spot isn't the moon. It's rain on the lens	Me looking victorious... ("Where's the cable-car down?")

Shortly after these photos were taken the weather really took a turn for the worse, with the wind picking up and rain simply pouring down. As I continued to circumnavigate the top in a bid to find my way down, I was shocked to come across a party of 12-year-old children being forced onward by some mad grandad. He reminded me of my father when I was a child, "never let the elements beat you!" A couple of minutes later I found the other half of his group sheltering behind a large rock and shouting across the crator, telling him that they refused to go any further. I hope that they made it down safely. (I'm not saying that my dad ever did that sort of thing with his children when he was teaching. He left that sort of thing for the family holiday).

It was 4.30am when I finally turned my back on the crator and began my descent. I felt like I was wearing a wetsuit. Initially I took it very slowly, but after 30 minutes I gave up on caution and began to hop, skip and jump down the trail. I made record time, completing the 10 stages in just over 90 minutes, as opposed to the three hours as stated in the guide books. The mud was so thick towards the base, but I took great pleasure in squelching around in it all as I was already so wet and dirty.

Boy was I glad when I reached a tarmac road! A further 40 minutes of walking along that brought me to a local railway station, from where I planned to take the next train to Niseko. It was whilst I sat in the waiting room that I got talking to a very friendly old lady, who could hardly believe that I'd just got back from the peak of Yotei. It wasn't long before she and her son had brewed up a nice pot of tea, which they served along with bread, cakes and rice.

Being typically Japanese, they then brought me home. Boy was I glad to step into a nice hot bath.

That's the last time that I climb a volcano without checking the weather forcast first!

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