The rest of Hokkaido

We got back from Rebun and walked to the Rider House, which took a long time and kind of sucked. When we got there no one was there so we used a big sink upstairs to shower (there was no shower there) and devoured a bunch of ramen before getting on the train. We stayed at a really cool rider house in Furano I think, which was right by Yamabe, where we were planning to go hiking. It was kind of a cabin in the woods, but it had laundry machines and there were maybe 6 other Japanese people there who actually were "riders" meaning either that the were biking aroud Hokkaido or their job was somehow riding motorcycles around doing something about "communications." Anyways they were nice but had basically no interest at all in talking to us, which was kind of nice. It was nice to feel like "just some guy" there and not be singled out for being white.

Next day we took the train to Yamabe and geared up for our two day hike up Ashibetsudake. I got a knee brace, which helped me immensely, as did Collin (it was his wise idea), and we all got basically a bunch of bread and 2 liters each of water. It's a 3km walk up to the trail head from Yamabe, and carrying all our stuff that really sucked, so we managed to hitch-hike with a cool mom in a minivan who had been to America and so didn't think we were scary. We went into a house/eating establishment to ask if they had coin lockers for us to use to keep our non-essential stuff, and the nice old lady who ran the place said we didn't have to pay anything and she would keep our stuff. She also warned us to take enough water.

The first day of hiking was really awesome; it was basically a trail through a lush jungle and up to a set of 3 pretty spectacular waterfalls. The trail itself was pretty intense; it was usually only the width of both my feet together, and sometimes more narrow. They had big rocks with chains at the top you had to repel down and chasms you had to jump over. In general it was kind of a roller-coaster but the first day was only like 4.5 or 5 km so it wasn't that bad. However, it was and would continue to be pretty dangerous; the path was frequently really dangerously narrow, with one or both sides leading down into a rocky river or down a mountainside. Collin also lost his water trying to do one of the repels with it under his arm, so that left us with just my 2-liter and Garrett's camelbak. At the end of the first day there was a cabin where we stayed for the night. We gathered some wood and used rocks to make a fire pit by the side of the river. It was kind of hard to get going because everything there is wet obviously, but it worked and it was a nice night. A group of 4 Japanese hikers came before sunset but they weren't really interested in us and just made food in the cabin all night.

The next day we thought would be around 11 km, but I think it was more like 12-15km. It was a difficult and dangerous hike to say the least. The first part was literally hiking up a steep waterfall, which was wet, muddy, and at times scary. There was one part where you had to basically sidle around a steep gravel wall with maybe a 20 degree incline with no path whatsoever and just a rocky falls below you, and I almost lost my footing and fell. Luckily I grabbed a root that was sturdy enough to hold me, but if it hadn't I could easily have died. In general on the hike I got the feeling that I could easily die, so I was taking it pretty slow. Well, not that slow, because we still passed all the Japanese hikers on the trail except an intense grandpa and a young guy or two who were doing it all in one day by themselves, which amazes me. After the climb up the waterfall, which was pretty tiring, I think was the long part of the trail where it was so overgrown that you couldn't really see the trail and the plant life cut up my arms and legs pretty well. You could see that the path was cleared if you could see down to it, but from above it literally was just a sea of plants. Then was several kilometers of going up and down every peak (maybe 6 or more) on a ridge of shark tooth-like mountains, before reaching the very tallest one which was like 1700km. That was pretty trying, and there were no clouds so it was hot. The summit is also about where we ran out of water. Collin and Garrett also have a different philosophy about hiking than me which was basically that if you're faster than someone you should race ahead of them until they're out of sight and eventually wait for them to catch up with you. Well, I am out of shape and have shorter legs and a heavier pack which was just a school backpack and I'm obviously weaker, and I was afraid of dying, so I was mostly going slower than them, and that meant I never really saw or heard from them except sometimes when they would stop for me to catch up, and then sometimes just keep moving on anyway. Personally when I go hiking with people I would rather slow down for them by being close enough that I can talk to them or at least see how they're doing the trail and make sure they don't fall. I'm not saying they're bad people or that they did anything wrong, but it resulted in me doing a large proportion of the hike basically by myself, which kind of sucked for me. And to be fair, when I'm annoyed I usually just don't say anything about it, and I didn't want to slow them down if they wanted to go faster, so they had no real way of knowing what I wanted anyway. The hike was still really great and fun though and I'm glad Garrett found it. The way down was actually one of the worst parts, because it was a really steep incline entirely paved in sharp rocks which really hurt my feet. By the end my legs were so weak I wasn't sure if they were going to make it. Basically in my head I was saying "I know I have to make it the rest of the way but I'm not sure how I'm going to yet" just when we finally reached the end. So that was definitely the most difficult hike I've ever done. But it was quite beautiful and I have some great pictures.

When we got back to the white house to get our stuff, the lady was really nice, and gave us slices of cantaloupe and ice water. Collin gave her one of our Colorado tea set gifts in return and we headed over to Seico-mart to devour bowls of ramen like hungry hungry hobos. We definitely took a taxi back to town rather than walk the 3km or even risk hitch-hiking, as we had a train to catch back to Sapporo. We checked into a tiny hotel room, had a couple of strongs and showers and went to bed. I discovered in the shower that I picked up a couple of small ticks along the way, which was pretty nasty. We're all pretty beaten up from the hike; Garrett's calves and knee I guess hurt, Collin's feet are covered in blisters, and my whole body is just in general very sore. I might have a blister or two as well. Also my arms and legs are covered in cuts and scratches and the back of my right knee where my brace was got rubbed off on one of the hamstrings. Fortunately the next day (now yesterday) was pretty much entirely spent on trains down here to Kyoto, where we're staying in a pretty cheap hotel for a few days. We slept until about noon today. I'm not sure what we're going to do here in Kyoto but I don't have a ton of money left and I somehow used more of my credit than I had thought possible, so I'm not going to be doing much if it involves spending money. We did get some cheap yakisoba last night which was super delicious though... the end.