Hiuchigatake 燧ヶ岳 2356m difficulty~3 scenery~3 14/08/06


Haruna and I set off from Fukushima at 4am for our 3 and a half hour drive south/west to the border of Fukushima and Niigata prefecture and the Oze wetlands, home of Tohoku's tallest mountain Hiuchigatake. As it was Obon holidays here in Japan the place was pretty busy with people on holiday from all over Japan. After finding a place in the 1000yen car park we set off for our 4 hour climb to the top.



After an hour or so of rather steep hiking and rock scrambling we came to a plateau with a wooden path and many small ponds and flowers around. After another climb up
through forest and another plateau we were on the final summit climb. It had been raining quite a bit so the path was very muddy and slippery. At the summit there was a small shrine with a few coins and somebodys forgotten car keys placed in it. It would really suck to get back down to the carpark and realize you left your car keys all the way back up at the summit.Most of the time there was no view at all because of the clouds surrounding the peak but after about 15 mins it cleared and we got nice views down to the big lake ( Oze numa) and surrounding mountains.
The weather was starting to turn bad so we headed down jogging down the wood path
sections and trying not to slip or twist and ankle on the steeper bits. It started to rain after about 15 mins into the decent. We managed to get back to the carpark 1hr 30mins. Then straght to a local onsen (hot spring) to soak the legs in preperation for the climb the following morning.