Ishizuchiyama

Wow, what a day. Got a chance to go to the top of the highest mountain in Western Japan, Mt. Ishizuchi. I was invited by one of my students, a doctor who runs the health center on the main campus. He heads various different clubs at the university, this one was the mountaineering club. I was expecting a bunch of students to come with us on this trip, but it actually turned out to be a bunch of his friends, all of whom were in their 50's and 60's, except for one Czech grad student who was 30. So I'm thinking a nice easy hike to the top of the mountain, some good views from the top, and then a trek back down. Boy was I wrong.

To start with, just getting up to the starting point was an ordeal in itself. The roads leading up to the mountain were some of the windyest roads I have ever been on, with little or no guardrail, and 100+ meter drops off the side. Good thing that everyone seems to be used to driving on these roads, judging from the speed that they took the hairpin turns which came ever 150 meters. I was gripping onto the handrail for dear life. But we made it up to the parking lot, safe and sound. The trail leading up the mountain wasn't too bad, some wooden slats placed along the ground make the ascent pretty tame. There was a decent amount of foot traffic, so they've been beaten into the ground by many travelers before us. We got to a rest area around 2km in, and had some water.

That's when the fun started. Instead of continuing along the main trail, Dr. Saheki points us into the bush next to the trail, along what is known as the ridge path. Mind you, there was no path, everything outside of the trail was covered in susa, which is a smaller variation of the giant bamboo. Also, a nice sign telling us that we should turn back, and were now traveling at our own risk. What started as a hike turned immediately into a bush-whacking climb. And I do mean climb, the grade was at least 70 degrees most of the way up, and even sometimes seemed as much as 80, with the occasional vertical portions when we needed to overcome large rock faces. Oh, and did I mention that it was a true ridge? The path we were blazing was at most 1 meter across, with 400+ meter drops on either side. Definitely no room for error. In order to make sure one didn't fall, and come to an untimely end, it was necessary to wrap your hands around a few of the bamboo stems and haul yourself up to the next foothold. Luckily, the shoots were extremely strong, but the rocks and ground underneath was pretty wet. However, the people I was with made short work of the terrain. They're in most of the pictures I took, which look smokey, but that was because we were at cloud level. Every fifteen minutes or so, it would get extremely hazy and cold, but then another gust of wind would come over the ridge, and everything cleared out. All in all, the view was spectacular, especially as there was nothing on either side of me to block the view!

After about 3 hours of this climbing, I got to the summit portion, which basically consisted of me free-soloing up 5 meters of rock to get to the final ledge. Great last section, especially because I didn't notice that Dr. Saheki had tied up a rope, which everyone else was using to climb up. That would have made it a ton easier! We made it to the top, and stood on the summit for a few minutes, taking pictures and seeing the amazing scenery of the Shikoku mountains laid out in front of us. Mind you, this was on the top portion of the ridge. The pictures I'll post don't really do it justice, so I'll be sure to add the two videos I took which actually give some depth to just how far there was to fall if you missed a step. At the top of the actually trail, there is another Shinto shrine, along with a restaurant. Pretty crazy place to stop for a meal. We brought our food, so after a little snack, we headed down the mountain, but along the usual hiking trail. My knees were thankful, and I couldn't have imagined going down the way we came up.

However, my experience was not quite over. You see, there are two normal ways to get up to the top of the mountain: one is by the normal hiking trail, which consists of a fairly sharp rise coupled with staircases set along the mountain face, while the other is a set of large metal chains set into the mountainside. You heard me, big old iron chains. Well, one of my fellow mountaineers decided like I was the adventurous type, so as we were walking down the trail, he looked at me and said, "You. Me. Chains. Go down," turned around, and walked down a side trail. You can probably guess where this is going. At this point, it would behoove me to mention that up close, the chains were a lot older-looking than far away, and the rock face was far steeper. Now, I'm not afraid of heights like some members of my family, but I'm not terribly fond of them either. Let's just say that climbing down 250 meters of mountain using nothing but wet rocks and old iron chains was a fairly good test of the size of my, how to put it, courage. Going up wouldn't have been so bad, I could have just focused on the climb, but descending meant I had to continuously look down to determine where I should place my next hand or foot. Didn't help that the rest of the group had since reached the intersection point at the bottom, and at once was both egging the two of us on, and showing me just how much farther down I had to go. In any case, after a decent amount of leg-shaking and sweating, I managed to make it down, with only a few scrapped knuckles, and a good adrenaline rush. After that, the rest of the descent was quite easy, with only my poor knees to tell the sorry tale of all the steps that remained on the way down.

By far one of the more challenging "hikes" I've ever signed up for, if not the most. However, I would absolutely recommend this trip to anyone visiting this island, if at least not by the ridiculous route that we took today. I promise, there is a straight and somewhat easy way to get to the top, we just didn't take it. For now, I'm going to take a nice hot bath and soak my muscles, and sleep well tonight!