Kumatori-san Hike - Day 2

So, day two arrived! We had a surprisingly good night's sleep, and slept with covers for the first time in a couple of months! It was very very dark, and there were some strange squeeking and squeeling noises from the forrest, which we attributed to the deer and the bugs - bit eerie at first . You can see we camped in a beautiful little glade by the side of the walk

You can see the signpost for the walk on the LHS of this pic
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So we woke up at about 7:30am - exhausted after our hours and hours of climbing! We packed the tents and made our way back up the hill to the hut anticipating our large and tasty breakfast. Funny, we thought as we walked up the hill, all the tents have gone.

We got to the hut, which now looked like the Marie Celeste, and asked about breakfast and Bento boxes (lunch boxes), to which we got crossed hands (Japanese symbol for 'on your bike'!) and Ni Ni. "Pot Noodles arimasuka?" we asked hopefully, and once again ate prawn flavoured Pot Noodles as our meal

Still, it was a lovely view, and Pot Noodles are quite filling (if a little dull two meals in a row!)

We worked out that many people must get up very early and aim to reach the summit at dawn, so whilst we were having our breakfast, some walkers were coming down, and there was a group of Japanese older walkers who were clearly astonished and impressed that Felix and Neve were there (the only way to reach this hut was to walk up hill for about 7 hours!), so they took lots of pics on their cameras, and this one on ours!!

They also showed us their shiny pin-badges which they put on their hats for each mountain they'd climbed (one of these old chaps had climbed the 'hyaky mountains' (hundred most famous mountains in Japan). So we bought each of teh kids a badge which they proudly pinned to their hats.

Here's the view whilst we were brushing our teeth - not bad eh!

So we then walked away from the hut...

and up the path, which was all marked by ropes for the walkers who aim to summit at dawn

We reached the summit after about half an hour. Here's teh view of the path we took next.

This is Felix at the top

Here's Neve sitting on the grid marker / map stone thingy, and to the left of where I'm standing, right on the edge of the photo is Mt Fuji, although it was coming in and out of the clouds.

It was amazing - you could see only tree and snow covered mountains to the horizon in all directions.

You can't see this very well, but the peak was 2.017m - and we started from only about 350m - quite a hike!

As you can see - no signs of Tokyo here! Apparetnly something like 80% of Japan is uninhabitable, which is why the cities are so very crowded!

Some of teh walking in the way down was quite easy, and very pretty, if rather long!

Here we all are being very Japanese again!

We saw these amazing butterflies - they were about the size of an an adults outstretched hand!

...and this was real - we thought it looked like a Mario Brothers toadstool, so wanted a pic!

Here's a cool pic of Neve (posing!) on a rickety old bridge!

The last 2 hours of the walk were downhill (so the book said) Easy we thought - OMG this was so far from the truth - it was downhill at about 45 degrees for 2 hours - over tree-roots, and scrabbley rocks.

We thought it would never end - and when we eventrually got to the town at teh end, I could barely not walk, my legs had totally seized up.

Everybody did amazingly well - the kids were fab. Ross calculated that we'd walked 31km in total, and gained and lost almost 2000m (plus many ups and downs!) Felix had his first poo in a dunny, and we carried our tents for the first time. And we survived on Pot Noodles, peanuts and Banana chips for 36 hours!!!