Japan north Alps hiking trip: days 0 & 1

July 16 - Bullet train to Nagoya, local express train to Takayama (高山), where Wakana picked us (Melissa &  Sara) up and we drove to meet Masashi and his wife Mutsumi. Stayed at a cabin near the trailhead, ate the local famous Hida beef for dinner and soaked in a hot spring. We sorted our gear for the 4-day hike ahead of us and distributed some shared food items.

July 17 - 4am wake up and in the cars at 5:30 to drive to the trailhead. Bonus 1.5km hike from the parking lot to the trailhead 😂! Started hiking around 6:45am.

Starting pack weight: 13.6 kg

We hiked from Shin Hodaka Onsen (新穂高温泉登山口) to Sugoroku Hut (双六小屋) and camped there.

The first day was almost all up, the trail started as an old logging road and quickly turned into what we would be walking on for 98% of the hike, rocks. Small pebbles, big boulders, step like rocks, loose rocks, flat rocks, steeply angled rocks, there was hardly a patch of flat earth on the whole hike. Just a few sections were dirt trails, but this route is super popular and well-marked the whole way with signposts and circles spray painted on the rocks.

13.2 km in 8h40m with 1707 meters of elevation gain.

Highlights from day 1:

- stopping at a mountain stream and dipping my hands into ice cold snow runoff water, so refreshing

- getting shaved ice (strawberry flavor) at the first manned hut that we passed, it really hit the spot

- being surprised that there was so much snow left on the mountains. Before my hike somebody asked me if there would be snow and I confidently replied that there wouldn’t be, oops…

- seeing our destination from a distance, a hundred colorful tents dotting a valley hillside

- Masashi’s chili con carne for dinner

- a little after 6pm we felt an earthquake, I heard a rumble that was similar to distant thunder and then a hard jolt from below. Then so many heads popped out of tents to figure out what had happened.

- While watching the sunset, we spotted the next manned hut that we would pass on day 2, it looked so far away in the evening light (actually, it was pretty far away, lol)