Kita Yatsugatake

Since we had such a good time in Hakuba, and since we had dragged all our winter gear to Japan, we decided to go for another trip to the mountains. This time we went to the minor ski resort of Kita Yatsugatake in Nagano prefecture.

We arrived around noon, and after dropping our bags at the hotel we headed straight up in the cable car to do a short tour around the largest of the the nearby hills, Kita Yokodake. It was surprisingly popular, although given the glorious weather that shouldn't be a surprise.

It's very tall! Although thanks to the cable car we only had to climb a few hundred metres. A steep climb through a (snowy) forest. We had crampons. I think this would have been a tedious slog in the summer, but in the snow it was pretty easy going.

We stopped to have lunch on the way down. It was very cold, and quite windy at the top, so we needed a bit of shelter.

The hotel we were staying in was a master piece of kitsch.

And it had an outdoor bath. Main problem is that this bath is really outdoors, and is not attached to the hotel building at all, making getting dried and dressed afterwards pretty chilly!

The following day the weather was much cloudier. We went for a longer tour around the other hills.

To our surprise these were much steeper and more challenging than the big one we'd climbed the previous day.

I got a good buildup of beard-ice.

The crampons were really needed: this was proper steep. We'd have had no chance wearing boots alone.

Deep snow completely buried trees.

This is the first of three peaks of Mitsudake. The weather was a bit wild at this point.

But ater navigating a tricky boulder field we got round all three peaks in pretty good time.

The way down involved a bit more scrambling than we expected!

And that was pretty much it -- stopped for a freezing cold lunch in the forest, and got down the mountain in time for our bus back to civilisation. And then the train to Tokyo.