May 8th. We Hearty Hikers suspected that it might still be a little early for the shiroyashio (the WHITE yashio) to be blooming, but thinking it was better to be early than late, we drove up to Umegashima and climbed the first half of the trail up Mt. Hakkorei.

We went up as high as the Fujimidai lookout, then crossed the ridge to Abe Toge (the Abe Pass), then walked back down along the Sakasa River to where we started. The ridge in the above photo separates Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures.The demari were beginning to bloom, as were the purple miyama azaelas, but it was the yashio, as every year, that so captured our hearts.

Yes, we are crazy about them.

The red-tipped green stars and white blossoms—under the blue sky—give us great joy.

We could take a zillion pictures—and still want to take more.

Our old buddy Fuji-kun floated by, too, to have a look at the yashio.  This Japanese tit flew in, too, to have a look.

Okay, okay—so that’s a bit of an exaggeration. The tit was obsessed with a certain tree, just as we were, but it was a different tree.

So obsessed, in fact, that he cared not at all how close we got to him.

Wonder what it tasted like?

The woodpecker was a different story. We heard him and his buddies all over the ridge—but he only flew into sight for a handful of seconds.

Kindly, though, the yashio remained still enough for us to take as many pictures as we wanted. 

So we did. We were very grateful.

The trees were blooming on the first half of the climb up to Fujimidai . . .

. . . and were mighty perky . . .

. . . I mean mighty mighty perky . . .    . . . but I’d say only about  a fifth of the blossoms on the whole mountain were out.

The higher we went, the more we saw leaves still busting open. The more we saw the flower buds still tightly closed.

Which of course means that next weekend, a climb up Hakkorei will be a glorious experience indeed. Maybe I’ll see you up there.