Follow the yellow brick — uh-oh!

Or, considering how disorganized I was, and as dear old George used to sing, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

April 6. I thought, since I’d suggested to three others that next Sunday, the 13th, we drive to Umegashima (a place I’d never been) and climb Bara no Dan (about 1650 m, and which of course, having never been to Umegashima, I’d never even seen), that I ought to drive up today and check it out. I took a guinea pig with me. We’ll call him Super S, since he never got angry with me even once, despite my piss-poor planning.

Super S, the consummate good sport.

Basically, we didn’t . . . excuse me, I didn’t know there would still be so much snow up there–and thus I didn’t think it would matter so much when I went to pick up Super S and saw him step out of his house with tennis shoes on.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was beautiful, and let that be a lesson to all of you. (Still, I was a bad guide, no question.)

Shizuoka Station to Umegashima was about an hour and ten minutes, and that included a stop at the Circle K for coffee and rice balls. Don’t ask me which Circle K. There are thousands of Circle K’s on that road.

When we came to the end of the road (Umegashima) we turned right, drove up for about two minutes, parked in a little bit of space on the side of the road, and walked about seven big-boy steps to the Hakkorei/Abe Toge trailhead.

The first part of the walk went well. About an hour through the cedars. An easy path, if a little steep. Only hints of snow. Then we came back out to the road. Where we discovered a parking lot. Why didn’t we park there? What silly questions you ask.

We walked along the road for about ten minutes and then came to the “Old Abe Toge Entrance.” Notice that I used italics for old. It was a cute little (notice the word little) path running along a cute little river. There was quite a bit of snow–and not a footprint anywhere. I was happy as a clam, but Super S’s tennis shoes were feeling uneasy. Soon, though, the little path became the no path . . . or maybe the sublime path . . . undeterminable, with normal human eyes, beneath the pristine and lovely snow.

What a lovely, lovely place to be lost! Why not take a picture? Why not have a cup of the tea you bought in France?

Super S brought up the word old. As in “no longer in use.” If my brain had been functioning, I would have processed things like this: there is a river. We are following it up. It is heading up toward the pass that separates Shizuoka and Yamanashi Prefectures. It will fizzle out at some point (it will not leap into Yamanashi)–and that point will be, more or less, the Abe Pass (Toge). Indeed, we were going the right way, but at the moment we weren’t sure–and the tennis shoes just weren’t going to make it through the white stuff. (I did have one set of crampons in my back pack. They seemed comfortable there.)

Well, even if we did make it to the source of the river, the source of the Abe River, the source of the Abe River that flows and flows and flows through the heart of the valiant Shizuoka City, we would have never, with that one set of tennis shoes, scrambled up the steep slope of Bara no Dan. See picture immediately below. That’s it. Bara no Dan.

But imagine it. Fifteen minutes from the source of all things . . . right where you’re supposed to be . . . and lost. There’s another lesson for you!

But it was beautiful. I said that, didn’t I. We walked up along the road and then dipped down it, until we’d passed into Yamanashi–where we saw the road disappear. Then we walked back a ways, scaled a little ridge (the tennis shoes did what they could) and got a nice view of the surrounding mountains. Then silly me decided to go a little further up (yes, I had on boots), and I scrambled along the edge of a ridge through some wind-tangled trees and flushed at least one deer from its leveled resting spot. I didn’t see it/them, but I must have been within about five yards of it/them. I would have checked the tracks if I could have plunged into the brush as it/they had.

It was pretty cool being in the snow amongst the tangled trees.

All day, it snowed on and off, but for about five minutes on the way down, it was quite a blizzard. Not what I had expected. Blue sky, grey sky, blue sky, grey sky.

Oh, lovely blue sky,

Why oh why did you leave us?

Snow blew in, stupid.

The onsen, though, lived up to my expectations. Recommended. You buy your ticket and keep it, until you’re ready to leave–I suppose, like a hall pass.

Well, I’m a poor guide, a bit stupid and reckless, but I got us awful close to the source . . . and now my skin is as soft as a baby’s.

Travel with me as you like.