I was very excited to go on this trip, because this time we would be camping rather than staying in yamagoya, or huts. Camping seems more genuine. In preparation I had to buy a tent, a sleeping bag, a mat, and some other equipment necessary for camping. Somehow, I managed to stuff everything in my 33 L backpack. It was very full and very heavy...
Early in the morning of August 13, I left my apartment and headed to Shinjuku, to meet everyone on the platform. We took the "Super Azusa" train that travels between Matsumoto City in Nagano and Shinjuku. The train we took wasn't the bullet train, but it was a high speed train. It took about two hours to get to our destination. We left on the first day of Obon, a VERY busy travelling day, so we had to get to the platform to line up for the train super early. We all got on and got seats. I basically slept the whole way, and I missed the beautiful scenery. After arriving at Chino (茅野) station, we caught a bus that would take us to the trail start. Little did we know, we took the wrong bus! Oops! Luckily once we realized we were able to catch another bus that went to the trail head.
Once we got off the bus it was time to start walking. We walked for about 3 hours to get to our campsite for the night. On the way there were ponds and creeks. It was all very scenic (naturally!). Recently, Nagano prefecture has been getting lots of rain, so the trails were quite wet and filled with puddles or little streams. Luckily the weather was perfect, sunny and cloudy.
After about an hour (maybe?) we reached a pond. It was really neat because the shore was littered with lava rock. However, you could tell by looking at how worn down the rocks had become that the mountain's past as a volcano was a very long time ago.
There were dragonflies everywhere! After resting at the pond for a bit, we continued on our way to our eventual destination, Twin Ponds (双子池).
This is one pond.
And this is the other pond!
There was a mountain hut between the two ponds. Interestingly enough, there was no camping allowed in the hut area or near the second pond. I suppose the reason is so that the water stayed clean. The second pond's water was so clean that you could drink the water straight. And that's what we did. We filled up our water bottles in the second pond and hiked back to the first pond where we could set up camp.
We camped on the beach of the first pond. We had two tents plus my one man tent. In this picture, the students are cooking breakfast. They made pancakes.
This is the pond at around 5:30 in the morning. We woke up at 4:30 am, ate breakfast and packed up so we could be on the trails by 6:30 am.
During the night, it rained a bit and it was windy, but my little tent held up. I stayed dry and warm :) The second day started off sprinkling and being cloudy, but overall the weather seemed like it would be okay. Boy was that wrong. By the time we began our first ascent to a peak, it was misty, damp, and cold, with intermittent periods of rain.
The sign post reads, Kitayokodake 2480 m.
We reached the first peak at about 9:30 am. The elevation of Kitayokodake is 2480 m, and on the exposed peak it was cold, wet and windy! The students were already tuckered out at this point. We had just climbed about 400 m in elevation. From here we descended about to a mountain hut, where it began to pour with rain. The rest of the day the weather was cloudy, misty, with periods of heavy rain. The trails turned into rivers and by the end of the day it was really quite slippery and dangerous. At all the observation points, you couldn't see anything, just mist. So the fun of reaching a peak was lost because there were no beautiful views. Everyone was soaked and freezing cold, not to mention tired. About 1 hour before our arrival at our camp for the night, our group split into two. The head teacher and 3 of the students were able to keep up a good pace. My group could not. I was kept at the back of the group with another teacher, and with us were two very slow students. They were dragging their feet so badly... A 30 minute trek turned into an hour or longer... It was very frustrating, but what can you do? When we finally reached the mountain hut and campsite, the other half of the group was waiting and eating ice cream they purchased from the hut. One of the slow girls was feeling ill, so at first we planned to stay in the hut with her. In the end, however, the man who was running the hut convinced us all to camp. It was still pouring with rain and I was afraid to set up my tent because I had no ground sheet. So I bunked in one of the group tents instead of risking a wet and cold night.
Once the tents were set up, I was able to change out of my wet clothes and I finally warmed up. Then it was time for dinner. The two slow students had fallen asleep, so the remaining three students cooked up spaghetti for everyone. We talked about whether we would be able to continue the next day, as the two sleeping students were having a very hard time. Also, the weather was supposed to be worse the next day. After dinner, the two slow girls woke up and one of them declared she could not go on the next day. So the trip was cut short by two days. I was pretty disappointed, but oh well. I think all the students were very pleased, because they were all very tired and sore.
The students packing up in the morning.
The sky from our campsite. I was trying to capture some rare glimpses of blue sky. Our campsite was at Shirouma Ike (White Horse Pond; 白馬池）
Our bags all packed and ready to go. Mine`s the purple and grey one.
At night, it finally stopped raining. We went to bed pretty early, about 7:30 or 8 pm. During the night the wind picked up. It howled like crazy! The gusts were so strong I could feel the tent lifting beneath me. I had a very uncomfortable sleep, but it didn`t matter because we were leaving the next morning. Instead of continuing on, we had a short walk (about 50 minutes) to the bus stop. And so ended the trip. I plan to go back and see the peaks I didn`t get to see.
In the morning it was cold; I wore pants, two shirts, a fleece and my rain jacket and I was still cold. When I returned to Kasukabe... It was SOOOOO hot! My poor body had a bit of a temperature shock!
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