An Ozzie Gaijin in the Japan Alps

Text and photography by Alan Dorin
(Originally published by MountainZone, Dec 2000)

It's mid-December. Only the locals and the foolish are about. What gaijin would travel the Alps in the winter?! This is certainly a question I've pondered several times since I started my little jaunt.

I awake after a relatively restful night. My tent is pitched in a pine and fir forest on the slopes above Yudanaka (most famous for the monkeys which spend their days contemplatively bathing in the hot springs which bubble from subterranean depths in a picturesque valley near here). The forest is icy, but under the shelter of the trees, and in this niche, the air is not intolerable. I seem to have pitched my tent beside a fungus farm...

Around me, countless forearm-sized logs have been laid out in neat rows in the moss. Springing from the sides are an incredible diversity of mushrooms, toadstools and other fungii I don't recognize. Actually, in truth, even the fungus I think I recognize is probably not at all what I know.

Breakfast consists of dried noodles and dehydrated vegetables cooked in my billy on my trusty MSR, which has proven invaluable in this cold (No, they didn't pay me to say that.) I scrape the ice from my tent and pack all my gear away with frozen fingers. It seems odd that only six months ago I was hiking through Arizona in mid-summer. I couldn't imagine a greater contrast!

As I descend from my hide-away the sun reveals itself more fully and exposes a magnificent vista - mountains stretching their white peaks upward. Enormous spirits, their pallid faces lifted to the heat-giving globe suspended above them in a hazy blue canopy.

I re-enter the forest and head along the muddy track towards the famed "monki park" (sic). I can tell I'm approaching it as the piles of rubbish are accumulating. The Japanese seem to have beauty down-pat at the macro and micro scopic levels. Every tree is gorgeous, every stone is carefully placed. But if you look a level above these, the beautiful arrangements, both natural and artificial, are destroyed by piles of human debris; old building materials, tin cans, plastic wrappers, concrete blocks, water piping... a sad state of affairs.

Out of the woods a monkey dashes at me - darn it! I'm holding a plastic bag with my maps and a guidebook in it... not something I care to lose. The monkey thinks otherwise though. He is a medium-sized male... scary! He grabs my bag. As I try to wrestle it from him, shouting, "No!" at the top of my voice, he sinks his teeth into my book... distasteful it must have been as he immediately releases his grip and sits back, looking at me as if he's sorry. That doesn't convince him to leave me alone though. He follows me carefully as I head for the safety of the admission window... yes, even natural wonders are ticketed in this land!

The monkeys are sitting about in the hot pools just as I anticipated. Such is the wonder of technology that I knew what to expect, having seen this scene in "Baraka" several times. Nevertheless, there is still something quite disarming about the faces of these creatures. I'd swear they knew more about life than any human who has ever lived. They examine their fingernails, check each other for parasites, squabble occasionally and paddle tranquilly as the steam and snow drifts about the air above the onsen.

Donning my pack once more, I trudge back the way I had come (keeping firm hold of my plastic bag) and then along the road further into the hills. I stick my thumb out and a young man pulls up in response. He goes out of his way to drop me at the trail head I was aiming for... saving me many hours of painful bitumen travel. The clear weather has been hidden at this altitude. Beneath me at the trail head are countless ski slopes, above me are yet more mountains and ominous clouds.

This trail I have selected because I reckon you could push a wheelchair up it in the summer and I don't want to do a solo hike mid-winter along a track which might see me stuck alone for days waiting for a break in the weather to allow my return. The trail is officially closed, but I pull out my gators and trekking pole and head past the closure sign (which I pretend to myself not to be able to read) and into the snow.

The woods about me are heavy with white paste. The snow lies thickly on the firs and bamboo grass. I am wading through it up to my knees. The going is slow, but as I leave the road and climb into the hills I feel quite rested. It is as if the weight of civilization were being left at the trail head. Here in Japan, civilization can indeed be an oppressive burden to bear.

I suck on a cough drop or three (I bought this brand so I could fill the tin with snow seal). The clouds continue to build, they most certainly hold snow, but for some reason that doesn't seem important. The lake along the trail is my intended night's resting place. It is a mere 4km away but I know that in this snow and with the climbing that might take me hours.

About me the afternoon sun is waning. The trees form a white and dark green patchwork about me, a magical wonderland I have never experienced in my home country, nor anywhere else for that matter. The snow of the track is smooth and clean, it's like wading through a field of ice cream. In places where the steep mountain slopes give way to small re-entrants, tracks of Japanese deer, monkeys and bear (I thought they'd all be asleep by now!) dot across the path and vanish into the milky trees.

This is not serious avalanche territory. It is well forested for the most part. Snowballs have tumbled onto the track from the forest. They roll themselves up like Danish pastries into little snail shells and make dainty lines across my way.

The afternoon light turns to dusk as I plod on into the night. For the last few days I've been hiking in the moonlight. Tonight is special. The full moon lights my way through the white sheet of cloud. It's as if frosted glass had been placed between me and a night light. The forest is clearly visible but in a diffuse glow. There are no shadows, everything is soft and flat. Perhaps I am looking through a lens coated with vaseline. This is such a weird feeling I can't help but laugh out loud. The silent forest swallows my intrusion like the deserts of Arizona did six months earlier. The link between the two extremes of climate strikes a chord immediately. "Life is full of coincidences," my mother loves to say.

Mountain sides across the valley are softly textured with the branches of deciduous trees. They make delicate brush strokes against the near-vertical mountain sides which I will have to try to capture on film should I come back this way.

The sun has well and truly retired. I drop my pack by an ancient marker stone which towers some nine or so feet above me and have a look around. The lake is gorgeous in the diffuse moonlight. It is a white sheet filling the spaces between mountains, as if somebody had laid a mat out for a giant cat to curl up on.

I pitch my tent in a cleared area in front of the lake. It is exposed to the sky but away from the snow-laden trees whose branches crack under the weight with which they have been loaded. Dinner (which is remarkably similar to breakfast) is welcomed.

I take one last glance out of my tent door before I retire for the night... lazy snow flakes are meandering their way towards the earth. I am in for an eventful night!


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Photographs & text copyright ©Alan Dorin 2000-2001