April 23: The Alpine Route
Apr. 26th, 2012 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskitePosting this again from the downstairs lobby of the Tokyu Hotel, where we’re once again stealing wi-fi access. Later today we’ll be in Kyoto, and should have more reliable wi-fi, so I’ll try to post more pictures.
To get started on the Alpine Route, you take an oldish and clanky train (the Tateyama Chiho Railways) deeper into the mountains. When the train stops, the next step will be an ascent of Mount Tateyama by what’s called a “cable car”, but is actually a funicular; that is, there’s no overhead cable, and the transport is via a kind of chain drive in rails under the cars. The day didn’t start well because it was cloudy and raining, and as we moved up the mountain, we moved into the clouds, which were blanketing the mountain even at low altitudes. It’s very atmospheric but also very wet—like walking through a shower with nozzles on all sides. You get occasional glimpses of scenery, but you’re packed so tightly into the car and there are so many people, you don’t really see much during the ascent.
The second stage of the journey is by bus, and its much slower because the road switchbacks up a steep slope, with scary drops immediately below the road—and for extra drama, they appear and disappear as the clouds shift, so it’s never quite clear what lies below you. The clouds were wrapped thickly around us, but because we were moving up slowly through a sparse alpine forest, the effect was still pretty cool: we got nice views of the trees around us as they emerged from the mist and disappeared again, and frequent glimpses across the slope or downhill through gaps in the clouds. As you climb, the depth of the snow rises. The position of the road is marked by frequent wooden poles, necessary because of how much snow falls in a given storm; the road can be buried to the point you can’t find it without a worker with a dowsing rod walking ahead of the plow. Each pole is marked in 1-meter intervals; the tallest we saw was marked 9 meters, and we later learned that the peak snow depth this year reached 17 meters (about 55 feet)! Many of the poles are bent at sharp angles by the snow as it creeps downhill under gravity, and many are snapped off outright. It’s not uncommon to see the lower meter of a pole in one place, and the top several meters downslope.
By the time you reach the top, the snow surrounding the road is a good 5 to 10 m deep, and one of the main attractions of the Alpine Route is getting out at the lodge so you can walk surrounded by walls of snow that tower overhead, each layered into many strata, clearly visible and packed tight by the weight of the overlying snow. The lodge/hotel at the top, near Murodo crater lake, is three to four stories tall, depending on which part you’re looking at, and has a a steeply pitched roof to shed snow. There are clear signs that the snow drifts onto and over the roof at times. We got out and had a nice stroll, but the clouds were still mostly solid and the wind was occasionally fierce, so it was like walking through a carwash at times. We managed to get a few nice pictures in between blasts of cloud, and it was worth the trip to get here, but it would have been spectacular on a sunny day. A particular disappointment was that the mist was too thick for us to safely walk out to the crater lake or to the nearby hot springs, some hot enough to be boiling away furiously (one is called “Hell Creek”). The trails are flagged reasonably well with poles, but it would be easy to forget where you came from and wander for some time in the midst, and there are warnings everywhere to stay rigorously on the trail because the footing is unsafe off the trail.
The lodge was packed with tour groups to the point that we abandoned any hope of trying to get into the restaurant, and instead settled for stuffed buns for lunch. I can’t imagine what it would be like during peak tourist season. One nice thing about coming on our own rather than as part of a tour is that there are separate lines for individuals and tours. Since we were among the few people traveling alone, we skipped right to the head of the line each time because we rarely saw more than a dozen non-tour-group tourists ahead of us.
The next phase of the trip was visually unremarkable, since it involved a shuttle bus trip through a tunnel that passed under Mount Tateyama. But it was sobering to think that by the midpoint of the trip, more than 800 m (about half a mile) of rock lay overhead. At the far end of the tunnel, there’s a nice plateau that looks down into the valley between Mount Tateyama to the west and Mount Akazawa-dake to the east, and breathtaking mountain views in three of four direction (i.e., the view backwards is blocked by Mount Tateyama). There’s also a tower atop the cable car station that will take you on the next step of the trip to Kurobaidaira, so you can look down and see where you’ll be going in the cable car: it’s a breathtakingly steep descent that isn’t for the faint of heart, but in the end, it’s over too soon. The next-to-last part of the trip is another funicular, but it’s through a tunnel drilled into the mountain for most of the way, so you don’t see much of anything. The car is also packed with tourists, so you can only occasionally steal a glimpse ahead down the tunnel.
Last stop is the Kurobe dam and reservoir, which is as impressive as most major dams, and has a drop of about 180 meters (about 600 feet) from the top of the dam to the reservoir below. You have as much time as you want to walk across the top of the dam and enjoy the view. All dams are major feats of engineering, but given that Japan regularly experiences significant earthquakes, it’s amazing that any such structure could survive.
A final trolley bus trip through a tunnel in the mountain took us to a local bus, which in turn took us to the Japan Rail train station and thence into Matsumoto. Nothing special to report, other than that we’re staying at the Nunoya ryokan, which is not as nice as Sosuke (the building is older and less well maintained), but is still plenty nice. We have another tatami room, which is comfortable, though it occurs to me than in another decade or two, we might have to forgo such pleasures; after a long day of walking, my knees are too creaky to make getting up from the floor very easy. Also, you have to really like a firm bed, since futons are not exactly feather pillows.
Most interesting point the first night: the pillows appear to be filled with barley or some other small grain rather than the usual foam padding. Thus far, I really like this kind of pillow: it conforms nicely to the shape of one’s head, better in many ways than a conventional pillow, and it never gets permanently compressed out of shape: you just pick it up, give it a shake, and it’s back to its original conditions. I’d never heard of this approach before, other than for the kind of neck pillow you can throw into a microwave if you’re having neck or back pain. Might just have to look into getting one of these pillows back home in Montreal!
To get started on the Alpine Route, you take an oldish and clanky train (the Tateyama Chiho Railways) deeper into the mountains. When the train stops, the next step will be an ascent of Mount Tateyama by what’s called a “cable car”, but is actually a funicular; that is, there’s no overhead cable, and the transport is via a kind of chain drive in rails under the cars. The day didn’t start well because it was cloudy and raining, and as we moved up the mountain, we moved into the clouds, which were blanketing the mountain even at low altitudes. It’s very atmospheric but also very wet—like walking through a shower with nozzles on all sides. You get occasional glimpses of scenery, but you’re packed so tightly into the car and there are so many people, you don’t really see much during the ascent.
The second stage of the journey is by bus, and its much slower because the road switchbacks up a steep slope, with scary drops immediately below the road—and for extra drama, they appear and disappear as the clouds shift, so it’s never quite clear what lies below you. The clouds were wrapped thickly around us, but because we were moving up slowly through a sparse alpine forest, the effect was still pretty cool: we got nice views of the trees around us as they emerged from the mist and disappeared again, and frequent glimpses across the slope or downhill through gaps in the clouds. As you climb, the depth of the snow rises. The position of the road is marked by frequent wooden poles, necessary because of how much snow falls in a given storm; the road can be buried to the point you can’t find it without a worker with a dowsing rod walking ahead of the plow. Each pole is marked in 1-meter intervals; the tallest we saw was marked 9 meters, and we later learned that the peak snow depth this year reached 17 meters (about 55 feet)! Many of the poles are bent at sharp angles by the snow as it creeps downhill under gravity, and many are snapped off outright. It’s not uncommon to see the lower meter of a pole in one place, and the top several meters downslope.
By the time you reach the top, the snow surrounding the road is a good 5 to 10 m deep, and one of the main attractions of the Alpine Route is getting out at the lodge so you can walk surrounded by walls of snow that tower overhead, each layered into many strata, clearly visible and packed tight by the weight of the overlying snow. The lodge/hotel at the top, near Murodo crater lake, is three to four stories tall, depending on which part you’re looking at, and has a a steeply pitched roof to shed snow. There are clear signs that the snow drifts onto and over the roof at times. We got out and had a nice stroll, but the clouds were still mostly solid and the wind was occasionally fierce, so it was like walking through a carwash at times. We managed to get a few nice pictures in between blasts of cloud, and it was worth the trip to get here, but it would have been spectacular on a sunny day. A particular disappointment was that the mist was too thick for us to safely walk out to the crater lake or to the nearby hot springs, some hot enough to be boiling away furiously (one is called “Hell Creek”). The trails are flagged reasonably well with poles, but it would be easy to forget where you came from and wander for some time in the midst, and there are warnings everywhere to stay rigorously on the trail because the footing is unsafe off the trail.
The lodge was packed with tour groups to the point that we abandoned any hope of trying to get into the restaurant, and instead settled for stuffed buns for lunch. I can’t imagine what it would be like during peak tourist season. One nice thing about coming on our own rather than as part of a tour is that there are separate lines for individuals and tours. Since we were among the few people traveling alone, we skipped right to the head of the line each time because we rarely saw more than a dozen non-tour-group tourists ahead of us.
The next phase of the trip was visually unremarkable, since it involved a shuttle bus trip through a tunnel that passed under Mount Tateyama. But it was sobering to think that by the midpoint of the trip, more than 800 m (about half a mile) of rock lay overhead. At the far end of the tunnel, there’s a nice plateau that looks down into the valley between Mount Tateyama to the west and Mount Akazawa-dake to the east, and breathtaking mountain views in three of four direction (i.e., the view backwards is blocked by Mount Tateyama). There’s also a tower atop the cable car station that will take you on the next step of the trip to Kurobaidaira, so you can look down and see where you’ll be going in the cable car: it’s a breathtakingly steep descent that isn’t for the faint of heart, but in the end, it’s over too soon. The next-to-last part of the trip is another funicular, but it’s through a tunnel drilled into the mountain for most of the way, so you don’t see much of anything. The car is also packed with tourists, so you can only occasionally steal a glimpse ahead down the tunnel.
Last stop is the Kurobe dam and reservoir, which is as impressive as most major dams, and has a drop of about 180 meters (about 600 feet) from the top of the dam to the reservoir below. You have as much time as you want to walk across the top of the dam and enjoy the view. All dams are major feats of engineering, but given that Japan regularly experiences significant earthquakes, it’s amazing that any such structure could survive.
A final trolley bus trip through a tunnel in the mountain took us to a local bus, which in turn took us to the Japan Rail train station and thence into Matsumoto. Nothing special to report, other than that we’re staying at the Nunoya ryokan, which is not as nice as Sosuke (the building is older and less well maintained), but is still plenty nice. We have another tatami room, which is comfortable, though it occurs to me than in another decade or two, we might have to forgo such pleasures; after a long day of walking, my knees are too creaky to make getting up from the floor very easy. Also, you have to really like a firm bed, since futons are not exactly feather pillows.
Most interesting point the first night: the pillows appear to be filled with barley or some other small grain rather than the usual foam padding. Thus far, I really like this kind of pillow: it conforms nicely to the shape of one’s head, better in many ways than a conventional pillow, and it never gets permanently compressed out of shape: you just pick it up, give it a shake, and it’s back to its original conditions. I’d never heard of this approach before, other than for the kind of neck pillow you can throw into a microwave if you’re having neck or back pain. Might just have to look into getting one of these pillows back home in Montreal!