Winter in the Bamboo Forest

We've been getting up early to put on our backpacks and walk up into the mountains on a road through the bamboo forest behind our apartment.  We're trying to ramp up the mileage and weight to gain some sensible level of preparedness for the distinctly non-zero chance that we're going to have a go at the Appalachian Trail when we head back to the US at the beginning of April.  Recently, it has been cold enough to snow instead of rain (always welcome, much drier to walk through and we don't have to shovel anything ourselves) and our route was transformed into a real winter experience.  We try to always carry a camera now in case we encounter some of Ishikawa's goat-deer-pig creatures (kamoshika) which we haven't seen since we started carrying the camera, so I took some pictures of the bamboo forest with snow on it.  The full (though small) set is on Flickr.

It has been a little dark at the beginning of these walks - had to use the headlamps a couple of times.

Turns out that bamboo is quite flexible, and snow brings the tops right down to head level.

Around this curve they all bent down together in a half-circle.

 Some days we are definitely the first humans to traverse the road, though we've seen the tracks of a number of different creatures.

Quite a thing to see before breakfast.

Blogging may be a bit thin on the ground from here to the end - planning one last Japan adventure but those posts won't be up for at least six weeks.   We'll post if anything cool comes up.