Climbing Hakusan

Hakusan is a famous mountain a few hours from us that is quite popular for hiking for reasons like being big, having plenty of natural beauty, possessing some religious significance, and the fact that these facts make everybody else climb it.  We looked into doing it last summer but our schedule was packed full - and spring and fall are not really options if you don't want rabid snowstorms to club you over the head and drag your body to someplace really difficult to find until spring.  Thus, we passed on it until this year when a conveniently placed long weekend offered us an opportunity to climb it in a non-frostbite-oriented fashion.  It is possible to climb all the way up the mountain and back down again in a single day, if you start really early and move fast the whole way, but with campsites on the corner of an alpine meadow available for use we opted for an overnight hiking trip instead.  A few friends of ours from the area were interested in such adventures and joined us.  See the accompanying Flikr set for all the pictures. 

 Starting off together at the base station - cell service is lost half an hour before the bus even gets here.

 It has to be said that we had really, really nice weather the first day.  This waterfall could be seen for most of the first couple of hours.

 View from maybe 1/3 the way up, looking back the way we came.

 

 They have huts all up an down the mountain with running water, and bunks for those willing to pay ~$70 a night.  We brought our tent instead.  Here we are out in front of the hut at the halfway point.

Hakusan has several large alpine plateaus, one of which hosts the campsite we stayed at.  It is quite surprising after hours of directly up to come to such wide, flat, lush places.

The "huts" can be quite large and have more amenities than the Appalachian Mountain Concervancy huts.  No need for it though, especially since the grass on the campsites isn't worn down much - probably softer on our pads than on their cots inside.

 To reach the campsite, we had to walk across a snowpack - which a lot of campers were borrowing snow from to cool their beer and other goods.

 The campground was quite a colorful spectacle with all the tents.  We found a pretty clear empty spot in the back though.

  There was a snowpack-fed stream running down the center of the plateau between the hut and the campgrounds which was, understandably, very cold.  Our toes appreciated it, but we discovered that if we left our feet in too long we experienced ice cream headaches in them, which was strange and not so pleasant.  Fortunately, the sun had been on the rocks all day and they were warm to the touch to counteract this.

Quite scenic aside from the ugly tourists.

 There were huts next to the tent area where tent campers could get potable water and find tables and benches.  We set up for dinner in there to facilitate everything out and sharing.

 Ana samples the canned grilled chicken that the Japanese boyfriend of one of our accomplices recommended. 

 We're still not sure if he was serious or joking.

 We went to bed at a semi-reasonable hour, which was good because we got up prior to the crack of dawn to enjoy the sunrise as we went from the campground to the summit.

 We took the shorter and more direct of the two paths to the summit from the campground.  The shorter path should probably have warning signs on it like "Turn back now, certain death awaits" or something on it but hey, we didn't ACTUALLY experience severe injury or death.  Just thought about it when clambering up very steep and slippery snowdrifts.  Was a little crazy at some points, and going down it would have been even more dangerous than going up, so we didn't turn back.

 Lovely view, if you're standing somewhere it is safe to look up, like back at the campground.

 

 It looked at one point like the rocks next to the snowpack might work better as a means of going uphill safely.  This theory proved unfounded and then I had to figure out how to get back down to the ice, a situation interesting enough to hold my full attention during this time span.

 

 After passing the trial of the ice, we arrived at another (higher) alpine meadow.  It was entirely full of wildflowers, including the rare Black Lily, which is apparently common to Hakusan and the area around it and not so many other places.  Take this info with a grain of salt, as it comes from the same guy who recommended the canned chicken.  The flower is pretty at any rate.

 There were several other striking wildflowers growing - see the full picture set for more.

 

 High alpine meadow of wildflowers...worth a lot of walking.  I've never seen anything like it before.

 

 We passed the highest hut and found campers who had slept there doing the standard Japanese morning exercises to the standard Japanese exercises music, which seemed a mite incongruous in the middle of nowhere.

 Above the final hut we could really begin to see over the nearby mountains into the larger range.

 Most of the mountain was surprisingly warm but the very tippy top had biting wind and we were glad to have trucked our thermal layers up there for the occasion.

 It was also a place to make one thankful for the drawstring of one's hat, though we spent a lot of time holding on to them just to be sure.

We went down the longer, not-as-death-defying path and found some additional nice views.  The lake is pretty, but I have to wonder about the true turquoise color a little bit.  The skies were gray and it misted a little bit a few times, but never actually hauled off and rained, which we were thankful for even if we had our rain gear at the ready.  Dry rocks are easier to clamber down than wet ones.  Anyway, we (eventually) made our way down safely and wrapped up a good little two day trip into the Japanese Alps.