Adventures in Aki: Catch-up post #2/3: My not-so shiny Silver Week

Hey folks,

The September catch-up continues with Silver Week (a bunch of public holidays in a row), which was from Monday, Sept. 21 through Wednesday, Sept. 23. It made for a nice five-day weekend. But it seemed like everyone else already had plans. I had just resigned myself to spending the break being a hermit when Leeako invited me to Mount Ishizuchi with a group of people planning on climbing it. Excited to have something to do, and ignoring my fear of heights and the fact that I knew good and well I was nowhere near in any kind of physical shape to climb a mountain — the tallest mountain in west Japan, no less — I agreed to go.

I met up with George and an Ehime Prefecture JET named Dani in Kochi City, and we took the train to Gary's place in Sakawa. Lisa, Ben and Leeako met us there. We stayed the night, squabbled over the next day's itinerary (the classic clash of the "we need to plan this out"-type people and the "let's just go with the flow and see where we end up"-type people — if you couldn't tell, I'm the former) and left the next morning for Ehime, where we met up with Dani's friend Paul and stopped at a convenience store to get stuff for lunch. I feel that I had good reason for insisting on figuring out a basic plan of the next day's events — to get to the main starting point of the hike, you have to take a gondola part of the way up the mountain. The last gondola runs at 6 p.m. and if you miss it, you're in for several hours of walking a poorly-marked path in the dark to get back down the mountain.

Arriving at the starting point:

Loading into the gondola:

The view on the ride up:

Arriving at the drop-off point:

(Don't knock the hat.)

From there, it was about a 30-minute hike to the shrine at the start of the trail.

And we're off...

The hike had to be like 95% stairs, most of which looked more like this:

(Picture stolen from Leeako.)

The other 5% of the hike: chains.

That's right, chains. Giant iron chains bolted to the side of the mountain.

There are three chains on the climb, not including this one. This one is the "practice chain." If you can't or don't want to climb the chains, you can take the stairs (which one hiker we encountered deemed "the loser road"). I decided to give the practice chain a go:

(Climbing the chain was actually a nice relief for my legs, since my arms were doing most of the work. Picture stolen from Leeako.)

After conquering the practice chain, we took a few minutes to rest.

(Ben, Gary and George.)

(Me, Lisa, Dani and Leeako.)

Onward ho.

At last, we came to the first real chain.

(Picture stolen from Leeako.)

My arms were too tired to do the second and third chains, so I settled for "the loser road." Stairs, stairs, and more stairs. They seemed to go on forever. I was beyond exhausted and wanted to quit with every step, but I didn't want to be the girl who almost climbed Ishizuchi.

I came across a smiling leaf, and — thought it may sound silly — it gave me some small motivation to trek on.

It was nearly 3:30 by the time I reached the top.

(There's a restaurant up here. Seriously, HOW DO THESE PEOPLE GET TO WORK EVERY DAY?!)

(I'm pretty sure these chains are just for decoration.)

The view from the top:

(Tengudake, the mountain's highest peak. A few members of our party went on to climb it, but I had neither the time nor the energy.)

I'm glad I took pictures right away — only a few minutes later, the fog started to creep in.

Pretty soon, you couldn't see a thing.

(It would have been so disappointing to get ALL the way up there only to have this as a view.)

We ate a quick lunch, then started back down the mountain around 3:45.

Everything went downhill from there. Literally.

As I said before, I was not physically prepared for climbing Ishizuchi. As a result, I fell behind the rest of the group quite a bit on the hike up — but I would usually catch up when they stopped to rest periodically.

On the hike down, however, we were worried about making it to the last gondola in time, since it took four hours to get to the top and we only had a little more than two hours to get back down. My paralyzing fear of heights decided to kick in at that moment, and that — coupled with the fact that I'm clumsy even on flat ground — caused me to make my way down the never-ending tiny wooden stairs too slowly.

I fell behind the group again — way behind, to the point where I shouted and none of them heard me. I had my cell phone with me, but my reception was extremely sketchy (I had tried to send Garrett a text from the top of the mountain and it wouldn't go through) and I was too afraid of careening off the side of the mountain and plummeting to my death to take my eyes off the path.

About half an hour into the descent, I tripped down some stairs and caught my ankle on a rock. I ended up twisting my ankle, which slowed me down and increased my panic even more.

I focused my dwindling energy on making it back to the gondola in time (but I didn't dare check what time it actually was for fear that I would be too late).

Then Leeako called me. It was 5:45 and I hadn't even made it back to the shrine yet. When I told her what happened, Paul and Dani came back to help me. Paul took my backpack and ran ahead to try to get them to hold the gondola, while Dani helped me walk the rest of the way back.

It was, hands down, the scariest day of my life. I had no idea that getting down the mountain would be so much harder than getting up it.

(I later went on an tirade — immaturely expressed via a Facebook status ending in a four-letter word — about the dangers of leaving someone to hike alone. A couple of people apologized to me, which I appreciated and accepted, and I apologized for the way I expressed my anger.)

We got there at 6:03. The last gondola had left, but luckily they sent another one up for us (and, it turns out that we weren't the only ones who needed it — there were about eight other hikers who had missed the 6:00 gondola as well). While we were waiting, I bought some omiyage for the folks at the office.

(In Japan, it's customary to bring back omiyage, or souvenirs — usually candy or other edible treats — for your co-workers whenever you go on vacation somewhere. Yesterday, someone in the office who had gone to Korea brought back seaweed chocolate for everyone. I knew what it was, and I tried it anyway. I regretted that decision immediately.)

That night, we went to an onsen to relax our aching muscles, went to dinner, and crashed at Dani's place in Saijo. I iced my ankle overnight, and it was feeling much better when I woke up.

The next morning, we grabbed breakfast, said goodbye to Dani and drove back to Kochi.

On the drive back, we stopped to goof around on a suspension bridge.

We got back to Gary's place, chilled there for a bit, and then had dinner, where George showed off his hand towel-folding skills. Meet Samurai Penguin and Dog Head.