The 'marked' trails culminated in a beautiful lake (you can see the wooden steps which have been put in place!) Most people turned around at this point and headed back down. We however did not! We stopped here for some lunch, and continued up the climb. From this point on, it got a bit tougher - still a marked trail, but much more 'rough' and rocky, and no ropes!
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At one point, we also came across a small snow-field, which was most bizarre, as it was still about 25 degrees!
THe kids did amazingly well, but about an hour before we reached the top, Neve decided that she was 'bored' and that it was 'really pointless' to walk up to the top of the mountain, only to get there and turn back down again. Whilst she might have had a point, we were loathed to have got so close to turn back, and either way, we still had a long walk back down! So we eventually persuaded her to continue. After many, 'surely the top must be nearly here by now' 'it's just round the next corner', we rounded a corner to find a huge hut - and the summit only a little further up (you can see this in one of the pics, but I can't figure out how to move these pics around, as Blogger have changed their system!)
Neve was delighted when we suggested that she stayed at the hut and ate the chocolate cake we'd brought with us, and watched us climb the last bit, and she sat next to all these old Japanese bids, who thought she was very 'kawai' (cute) and wathed after her for a few minutes.
So this is the view from the hut to the summit. Here, Neve also chose her badge (for every mountain, you can buy a really nice shiny silver brooch (not sure how you spell that!) - it later transpired that this was Neve's key motivation for climbing the mountain! So for every mountain we've climbed, we've bought one each for F & N.
Here's a better view of the hut. What's interesting about walking up mountains in Japan, is that most of the people are old bids (well over 60 anyway!) We've figured this is becuase the Japanese people don't take holidays (one of Ross's compnay objectives is to ensure each of his workers take a week's holiday a year!!), so all the people who have time to climb mountains are retired!
This is Ross and Felix at the Summit. We really darted up here to get back for Neve, and a group of Japanese school kids (around 15 or 16 yrs old) thought it was most amusing that Felix ran past them on the way up, then ran back on teh way down.
These are my arty pics - there were the most beautiful alpine flowers
The day was great - except for hte last bit... We knew that we were going to have to walk the last bit down the mountain, as the gondola and chair lifts stopped at 4:30 and we didn't leave the summit until 3:15. So we walked around the (now deserted) lake around 5pm, then walked down the boardwalks - it was beautiful, you can see the colour of the light in these pics
However, things started going downhill when we got to the top of the gondola lift, and went 'off-piste' to find ourselves on a windy road, with no map, and no way of knowing where we'd end up. So we backtracked (back up a very steep cow field!) to try to find a route down. At this stage it was 7pm, and beginning to get dark. We tracked down what was prbably a black run, complete with many holes, bracken, walls, and bushes in teh way, then went down several dead ends. We were starting to panic a bit, when we found one of those green runs which traverse across the slope. Eventually, at 8:30pm we arrived at the bottom, with 4 very exhausted and thirsty people. Uncle Steve's restaurant beckoned. We were very sweaty and smelly, Ross and Neve were covered in spider's webs, and I'd clearly walked into a fly swarm as I was covered in tiny black flies. As there were no washing facilities at the campsite, we all used the little loo in the restaurant to tidy ourselves up! At the end of the meal, Ross yomped back to get the car - we all slept very soundly.
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