Hokkaido - Day 4 - The Spirit of Hokkaido

Meant to be a little more prompt with this, but something happened. Harry Potter arrived and you know how that is. Still reading so don't talk about how JKR was a fool for adding aliens into the final chapter or whatever. I'll probably blog on that later.

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Day 4 was the key day to the whole Hokkaido trip. When I think back to this trip I'll remember a lot of stuff, but the real experience, the true spirit, was this day.

As stated last post Mark and I awoke at about 5 a.m. It was chilly but the sun was up. We had no real breakfast so to speak and since neither of us felt like bathing in 33 degree water we started our ascent right away.

I think Mark is part mountain goat. Granted, he does this a bit more than I do and he is arguably in better shape than I am, but I get the feeling that unless I requested to stop for a breather every now and then (Usually 15 on, 3 off) he would climb all the way up without stopping. In any event, I noticed he was breathing pretty hard as well. When climbing you're tired. You don't talk much on the way up because your mind is on other things, but we did come to a consensus of sorts. Climbing mountains is pretty much all the same. Actually, vastly different come to think of it, but the same theories apply. I know our little walk up this trail wasn't particularly difficult compared to say, Mt. Everest, but it still wears you out. The basic pattern is, you go up the mountain feeling tired and enjoying the majesty of it all, you get to the top and take in one heck of a view, and before long you go back down because you're so freaking tired you don't really want to stay on this blasted rock any longer. And you're sore for days afterward, but before long you feel like climbing up some other rock. Now, I'm no mountain man like Mark, but I have come to enjoy this whole process in a limited sort of way. I don't plan on climbing any mountain that requires ropes for instance. But given a day off and some peak sticking up not too far away, I'll likely head in that direction and see what I can find.

I go off on this tangent because there's not a lot to talk about for climbing mountains. Pictures do the job much better. Follow the link at the end. But I hear you all saying that I promised not only pictures, but hair raising adventure at the end of the last post. Has my hair raised? I hear you ask? Not yet, but prepare to experience some true (and slightly glorified) brushes with excitement.

1) A kind woman takes pity on a starving mountain climber and nurses him back to health.

We were getting very hungry at the top of the mountain. Our food for the day was, quite literally, peanuts (see poor planning 1 post ago). Mark had a pack of peanuts that we split on the way up. Quite unsurprisingly, I was famished when we got to the top. Out of nowhere this lady comes over to us and gives us these little packaged jelly sandwiches and some chocolate covered almonds. We thanked her profusely and offered her some peanuts in return. It felt like a hollow gesture but she took it as it was intended.

2) One missed step means certain doom.

We were walking back along the ridge and I took a step and the earth underneath collapsed. I did my best to turn my body and fortunately caught hold of some solid ground. Really, I was quite literally hanging off the side of a mountain. I even used a root to pull myself up. Even in the moment, the sheer ridiculousness was not lost on me. Now, that's all true, but if you'll look at all my pictures, this was not a vertical mountain with loots of jagged rocks hundreds of feet below. Absolute worst case scenario? I might've broken something, but most likely it would have been a scrape or two as I was gradually slowed to a stop by lots of greenery only about 10 feet from the trail.

3) Ferocious Bears

I mentioned bear bells in my intro. It got the desired response. A sort of half-hearted "what's he talking about", but that's not fair unless you produce the goods. Bear bells are worn/carried by most hikers in Hokkaido. Why? Uh, bears, duh. And you don't want to be sneaking up on them. They avoid humans so if they hear you coming they'll just move along. We didn't have bells, but we didn't see any bears either...
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...until we were driving back! Just chilling in the car resting our stinky sore feet, contemplating what we had done when BOOM. Bear out of fricking nowhere. It was a rather young bear (I think) and it ran along the road in front of us at a very high rate of giddyup (at least 25 km/h) for about 10 seconds and then disappeared into the treeline again. Fortunately the camera wasn't far and I got a picture. Not a great picture, but a picture.

I was so happy to see a bear. I kind of joked about it before I left, but it really was on the list of things I hoped to see in Hokkaido (they're kind of famous for their bears). One of the reasons I picked this particular hike was that the book mentioned bears specifically. In any event the main thing I come away with after my encounter? Never try to run from a bear. They are crazy fast. The long and short of it? If they want to eat you/kill you, they'll get the job done. Hate to be morbid, but in the game of "bear human", bear always beats human. Granted it's not nearly as intricate as "rock paper scissors", but hey.

As dramatically as the day started, it ended equally undramatically. We drove back toward Sapporo feeling very sweaty and sore. C'mon now, this is Japan, that's not the right answer. The logical thing to do? Find an onsen and lower yourself into some hot spring water. It was actually my first time to an onsen, but there never was a better time to start. It was soothing and refreshing.

We got back to Sapporo and looked for some sort of hostel but couldn't find one. Not a big deal. A little extra money and we had a "real" hotel. And thus ended my trip to Hokkaido.

Hmm, but we still had 2 days...

See what happens when you don't plan ahead?

Pictures
Again, a lot of sameness, but it's forgivable because it's absolutely glorious subject matter.