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Published: February 12th 2017
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Marrying an outdoorsman pretty much guaranteed me spending quite a bit more time outside than I previously had. Luckily, my own passion for hiking had developed fairly quickly after moving here from the American midwest, where I was excited by small hills. The mountains that Japan offers are WAY more exciting and offer a pretty good diversity of courses and seasonal possibilities. The one thing I had never done, however, was hiking in the snow-covered mountains, because I always know I didn't have the right equipment for it. That's where my husband came in!
We had a weekend off and I was DYING to go snow-shoeing, but our spot to go (Nikko, where Ma-kun has friends who own a guest house) reported back poor snow conditions that were no good for snow shoes. So we had to find another place to head out to. We found Yatsugatake (八ヶ岳), a mountain in Nagano with a ropeway and a large area for skiing, snowboard, and trekking - and the bonus is that it was on the Chuo Main Line, which heads out from our area of Tokyo. It made for a very easy trip out on the limited express train from our
apartment. The mountain itself is about an hour bus ride away from Chino (茅野) Station, which is a stop on the Super-Azusa limited express train.
We bought crampons that tie around our normal hiking boots and brought with us about 8 layers of clothing (I was even double-gloving) because our lack of skiing and snowboarding meant we really don't own much snow-worthy winter gear. The round-trip bus ticket is 2200 yen (you save money by buying it ahead of time), and the round trip ropeway ticket once we got to Yatsugatake was about 1600, because we had printed out an internet coupon. Not bad at all when it comes to travel in this country, which can get very pricey very quickly. We struck out in the early morning and were rewarded with a beautifully clear sky (that quickly clouded over after noon).
The "snow resort" top of Yatsugatake is a winter wonderland! It's much of what I would expect the North Pole looks like. We went out for a short trek through the trees, and then doubled back to head up towards the peak, which required walking up a ridgeline and several switch backs completely covered in snow.
As most of it was powder, the crampons did the bulk of the work for us. We had thought about renting snow shoes, but we were glad we didn't do it, because it would have been much harder in those. The signs advertised a 60 minute hike, but clearly they hadn't been calculated with the snow. It did take us longer, and the last bit of it was NOT FUN - mostly because we kept getting stuck waiting for other people or passing them, and the snow had so little stick to it that climbing up took some real effort (there was a lot of sliding).
We had a great time, and once we got back, had some huge-portioned food in the resort. There were tons of people there with their skis and snowboards, so the ropeway had a long wait time, but returning from the top was easy as most people found their own way down, save for the trekkers. The buses are very infrequent, so watch your time carefully if you don't have your own transportation - only about 5 per day, with the last one running near 4:30pm. All in all, we LOVED the mountain, and
it was so beautiful to see it covered in snow!
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