So in an attempt to prepare our bodies for the tough climb we needed to get some training and smaller hiking trips under our belts. Luckily for us, Ashikaga is surrounded by mountains ... heck my school is situated in the mountains. So finding some mountains to train on was not a difficult thing. Plus, Mike loves doing things that don't cost any money. Don't ask me why, but he gets the same amount of money as us, but is forever living like his in poverty.
Anyway, during Golden week, we set out to do two climbs. The first climb we did included myself, Clarence and Mike. Not having hiked mountains in a long time ... needless to say I was struggling through our 3 hour climb. As most of you will know, I'm not one for walking or climbing or any sort. And even thought climbing Fuji was my idea, training for it was not.
The hike itself, simply wasn't straight up the side of the mountain, then down ... no, no, no. It was up and down about 3-4 mountains, over a mountain range. I have to admit, I was doing a lot of complaining and wanted to give up on a number of occasions. Maybe it was the fact that we underestimated the length of the climb and didn't bring enough liquids. The dehydration must have been making me delirious.
At the end of this climb, all we wanted was one of Japan's most wonderful invention a vending machine! We had to walk for another 20mins before we found one, it was bliss! And the end of this particular climb, we found a map, which showed other hiking tracks. So in a moment of delirium, Mike suggested we do a 4 hour hike two days later. I was going to throw him off the side of the mountain.
Anyway, we reconvened two days later in preparation for our 4 hour hike and picnic. John was to join us on this occasion and we promptly named our hiking group, "The 4Play Hike Club". This time we were smarter and came prepared with plenty of water. However, John being a novice didn't bring a backpack and had to drag a plastic bag around for almost four hours.
We came to the map point and off on our second hike we went.
The boys, prepared for a big day ... ready and willing!
Looked how pumped they are.
Some of nature against modern Japan.
This particular hike was similar to our previous one in that we were not just hiking one big mountain, but several smaller ones over a range. Going up was difficult, and going down should be joyous but everytime we went down, we knew that we only had to go up again.
Mike at one of our many rest points. Looking cool behind his master, The Sun!
Looking over the city of Ashikaga ... or is that Sano????
I did way better on this climb. Not so much complaining as I knew what was to lie ahead. The problem with the last climb was that, everytime we reached the top, I thought it was the end, only to find that there were several more kilometers to go. I was much wiser second time around. The same couldn't be said for John. He did a fair amount of struggling through this climb. A moment of ponder for me, before we were off again.
Mike thinking that this was actually a model shot.
The local wildlife were in abundance.
One of the many signs that tried to help us on our way. Ofcourse, all in Japanese and Kanji at that. We managed to not get lost though. The first mountain that we were meant to rise upon had the Kanji for "Little" and "Big" and then "Mountain" ... so it was "Little Big Mountain". From the ground there are actually letters on side of the mountain, like the Hollywood sign. Anyway, its actual name is Mt Daiso.
Clarence going bush, and showing that he too can climb mountains.
More mountains, with a nice perspective of the deal tree branch.
We could all be advertising for a Colarado ad right here.
Maybe one of the wrong paths that we might have taken. I'm saying that because we crossed many old Japanese people hiking and there was no way, they'd be able to get up and down a rock face. But Clarence is hanging on for dear life.
In case you got severely injured on the climb, there was a hospital close to these here mountains. No kidding!
And if you were simply tired of climbing, maybe a spot of golf!
On this climb, we must have trekked over atleast 5-6 mountains, up and down. This was the mountain range that we had climbed over. Pretty impressive to see what we had just achieved.
More mountains.
You can see on this picture a little path leading to the top. This was our final climb, just a little more and we were done.
One last look over the city!
A final sign to help us out ... only 0.4km more ... almost there.
Yatta! We made it to the top of Mt Daibo, 285m above sea level. This wasn't actually the highest point we had gotten to on this day. We actually reached just above 300m at one point. After 4 hours of exhaustion, we were ready to just lie down and die.
Well on to the next climb then!
No comments:
Post a Comment