More hiking, but they were Bigger mountains this time.

Seeing as I've already posted twice about hiking, I'm going to guess that people don't need a blow-by-blow of either of my ascent to nor decent from the peaks of the two mountains I most recently climbed. Most mountains are a fairly up and down proposition, after all, and the plot doesn't waver much from that.

Because of this, I'm just going to post a mish-mash of captioned photographs from my trips up (and down!) two fairly large and fairly famous mountains in Japan: Mount Bandai (磐梯山), and Ninouji Peak (二王子岳; page in Japanese only). If you want the "stats," on the former, you can simply read the Wiki for it. Ninouji is about 1,400something meters tall, and that's with the trail head effectively starting at sea level.

One more thing before I roll out the photos- Mt. Bandai is high enough in elevation, as well as far enough inland, that even though it had long been green and warm in Niigata, Mt. Bandai was still in the throws of late winter. Ninouji Peak, on the other hand, is generally more Spring-like much of the way up, although it did have plenty of snow higher up. Now, here are the pictures-

This is the old cryptomerea (or Japanese cedar) forest at the base of Ninoujidake- it was dominated by the massive trees, with a dusting of ferns for an understory. It was beautiful, and smelled sharply of Spring:



A waterfall on the way up to Mount Bandai. The sign at the turn-off for the waterfall cautioned "beware of bears," Sadly no bears were around, but the waterfall was pretty:



This is another view, still within the cedar woods on Ninoujidake. A pretty little creek ran down through a series of gullies to the beginning of the trail, where a cup was provided if you wanted to drink the water (I didn't take my chances):



Not far into the journey up Mount Bandai is a set of sulfur springs, melting the snow around them and releasing a number of colorful pigments into the water, along with hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide. If Hell started a restaurant, this is what the dumpster out back would smell like:



Here are the ranges of mountains marching away, looking towards Murakami. The weather for much of the hike was Niigata's trademark leaden homogeneous cloud-cover, which the sun broke only periodically:



On Bandaisan the whole journey was obscured by clouds which ran down to a few feet above the ground, muffling any sounds and giving the forest a ghostly appearance:



Dwarf flowers like these were in bloom all over the place above about 2,000 feet:



Most mountains of any noteworthy size in Japan are volcanic, as is Mount Bandai. At the trail head was a signing warning to be mindful of volcanic events (as though there's anything one could do during a full-scale eruption other than run like hell and pray in between breaths, but I guess it's nice to be warned), and there was evidence of volcanism scattered about the mountain, if you knew where to look. Aside from the sulfur springs, there was the barren spur of rock pictured below. I'm guessing that plants couldn't take hold here because the rock is relatively new, and has a high concentration of poisonous elements in it (sulfur, for one). The lake in the background is only a little over 100 years old, and was formed by the massive 1888 Bandai eruption.



Through a rare break in the clouds and mist: the excellently named Nekoma-san, or "cat magic mountain", although neither cats nor magic were in evidence (it's a ski resort, as a matter of fact).



The last photograph is of the tiny jinja at the top of Mt. Bandai; no larger than a fire hydrant (infinite cosmic power, itty bitty living space). The kami inside looked old and weathered, but the shrine itself was relatively new, for obvious reasons. I usually pitch in a couple coins at shrines when I visit them: I reason that it's worth a couple yen to help with the upkeep of cultural sights, especially if I'm benefiting taking lots of pictures. It needn't be much- my round-trip fare for Bandai was 60 yen (a yen is about 1 cent), and for Ninouji it was about 100 yen (because I didn't have any smaller change).



I've taken to hiking as a sort of hobby; it gets me outside, and boosts my vitamin D levels to boot. Because of the rain, the mountains here are always full of a variety of interesting plants and animals, which are worth the trip themselves. What I enjoy most, however, is that most of the places you go are the haunts of some demon or supernatural tale (as with Nekoma), which lends an air of antiquity and mystery to the average Japanese day hike. The mountains in America might have retained some of this if more of the Native Americans' names and legends had been better preserved in the public psyche, but as it is we wind up with a lot of places with names like "Bob's Peak." This may be interesting from a Westward expansion historical perspective, but doesn't bear the same gravitas that only a good myth can. I love the misty mountains here in Japan, and intend to keep exploring them for the remaining two months of my time here.