Hiking in the Japan Alps - Part 2/4

Japan north Alps hiking trip: day 2

Sunday, July 18 -

This was probably the easiest hiking day of the four-day trip.

10.3 km and just over 800m both up and down.

I woke a few times in the middle of the night shivering with cold. It wasn’t too cold when I went to sleep around 8pm the previous night, but the temperature dropped a lot during the night, I ended up covering the foot end of my sleeping bag with my rain jacket to prevent tent condensation from getting my sleeping bag wetter and then cinching the bag closed to full-on mummy style and then I could get warm enough to get back to sleep.

We got up at 4am, cooked breakfast (yay, hot coffee!), broke camp and were ready to hike by 6am.

We first climbed to the peak of Mt. Sugoroku (双六岳, 2860m) and then over the peak of Mitsumatarenge (三俣蓮華岳, 2841m) before descending down to Mitsumata Hut (三俣山荘).

Our plan was to hike to Kumono Daira hut to stay on night 2, and circle back to the campground attached to Mitsumata hut to camp on day 3, which meant that we didn’t need our camping gear for the next 24 hours. So, we rented space for 1 tent, set up our biggest tent and stashed all our extraneous gear in the tent.

Thus lightened, we continued on down a valley and up the other side, traversed the side of a mountain and finally came to Kumono Daira, our hut for the night. It’s not really fair to call this place a hut. It was like a jazz cafe fused with a mountain lodge and had a very cool bohemian vibe going on. The hut itself is built on a high plateau that is actually a fragile alpine marshland, so the walking paths are all on raised boards.

Just as we arrived it started to rain and most of us made it inside before the heaviest of the rain started. The rain intensified and then lightning and thunder started crashing quite nearby. We felt dry and comfortable inside charging our phones and sipping hot coffee. We began to wonder about hiking and camping in the rain the next day when just like that, the rain stopped and sky cleared up just in time for a gorgeous sunset.

After dinner and the sunset, we were shown a slideshow by the son of the founder of the hut, explaining the history of the men and women who opened most of the current trails in the area starting in the 1940s.

We went to bed in warm futons and slept very comfortably.