Mt. Nipesotsu

The last time I went hiking was in the spring of 2006. It was Aconcagua and somewhere around the 6,500 metre mark I had to turn back as the guy I was climbing with was suffering from altitude sickness. In December of that year Cian was born and, well, taking care of him took care of the mountains for a while. Which was a pity as I have all this mountain gear cluttering up the house and driving Sanae mad as I won't let her throw any of it out. Not even my commemorative albeit smelly Aconcagua pee bottle.
Earlier this month I finally got to go high again when we were down in Memuro during the Obon holiday. Abandoning my family (and/or fleeing from Sanae's extended relatives who were coming to visit), I headed up through the rolling farmlands around Kamishihoro where the morning sky was bedotted with colorful balloons floating gently up in the glimmering sky. The town hosts a balloon festival every year and given the happy crowds at the riverside campsite, seems quite popular.

I, however, was planning to go higher than the balloons, so I pushed on, past the signs warning me that there are no more petrol stations for the next 80 kilometres. The road after Kamishihiro heads into the mountainous wilderness of north Tokachi. There's not much up here besides trees, bears, deer and the small tourist village of Nukabira - which has neither petrol stations nor convenience stores. But wood carvings - that they do have.

Alluring as life size depiction of a bear eating a salmon was, I kept on. I was heading for Mt. Niposetsu on the eastern side of the great Daisetsuzan Plateau. I had climbed this mountain a number of times before and if it is possible to have a favorite lump of rock, well this would be mine. There's nothing particularly awe-inspiring or sublime about the mountain - it's a long, 8 hour there-and-back trip; thankfully, it's not very popular, and more than anything else, I enjoy the solitude.
It was past 8:00 by the time I got to the trail head and there were about 10 cars squeezed in against the trees. According to the hiking log, the first hikers set out at 4:40 that morning.
You get used to this sunrise trail fever here after a while. I used to feel particularly unmanned if I set off up the mountains after 6:00am, but with age comes wisdom and a desire to eat a full breakfast before spending the rest of your day in the hills. Though, admittedly finally getting under way at 8:30 did make me feel like a bit of a slack-ass. Albeit a well fed one.

The trail winds its way up initially through mixed forest, before breaking through the tree line into pine scrub and bushes. Then you skip over slabs of rock, stopping only to admire the late blooming alpine flowers up here. But for not for too long as a predatory pika (marmot) might savage you for their winter feed.

Can you spot the voracious, man-eating pika?

This high the trees give way to lichen covered scree and patches of flower spotted meadow. Small fragile alpine flowers were enjoying their brief time in the summer sun, and the wild blueberries were ripe and sweet. A man, I began to reckon, could make a life for himself up here. Live off the land as it were; grilled pika meat and blueberries, clothe himself in pika fur and shack up with the bears over winter... But no, wife, son and responsibilities beckon. As does a hearty dinner of butadon.

There is a lot of up-down, up-down on this climb; the trail follows a ridge line over two intermediate saddles before the final summit and it's not nice on the knees. I gradually began to meet the other early bird hikers, most of them on the way down from the summit. I'm not too sure which amazed them more: a foreigner climbing the mountain, or a foreigner climbing the mountain this late in the day.

And on I went as tufts of cloud came skudding across the sky and the midday heat braized the ridges and valleys. It was strange to think that within another four weeks or so, the first fleeting snows of winter would be dusting all these high places. Already some of the plants were blushed by autumn.

By the time I finally got to the top of the mountain, I was the only one there. All the rest had been and gone. So I stopped a while, took in what I could of the shimmering, hazy view, ate a leisurely lunch and thought of absent friends, Griff and Ben, who had made the journey with me years before, never thinking it would be our last.

The Ainu call me kumanomune - 'He who has the chest of a bear'