The Northern Alps Series: Mt. Goryu (五竜岳): Hyakumeizan #11. 18/10/20 – 14 Hour Ridge-walk

Hello folks, Alex here. This is part 2, and the continuation of the previous blog post where we left off at Hakuba-Sanso. There was a massive amount of walking required today, in relatively mixed conditions, ranging from deep snow to fairly intense rock climbing/navigation. As such, I’ll let the pictures do the talking, and leave

The Northern Alps Series: Mt. Shirouma (白馬岳): Hyakumeizan #10. 17/10/20

Hello again everybody, Alex here. Once more I decided to foray into the Northern Alps of Japan once more in 2020, this time setting my sights on two mountains on the same ridge line in the Northeastern part of the Alps: Mt. Shirouma and Mt. Goryu (五竜岳) those being 2,932m and 2,814m respectively. I planned

Mt. Ena (恵那山): Hyakumeizan #9. 11/10/20

Hello again everybody, this one has been on the backburner for a while, so I finally decided to write it up! This time I decided to go to Mt. Ena, which is technically part of the Central Alps (中央アルプス) group of mountains, making this the third and final mountain of the Central Alps for me

(Mt.) Daisen (大山): Hyakumeizan #8. 09/10/20

Hello everybody, this is one of two mountains that I climbed this weekend, so we’ll start with the one I did first: Daisen, in Tottori (鳥取) prefecture (Northwestern Japan). Daisen literally translates to “Great Mountain”, or “Big Mountain”, and not surprise at all, it is incredibly integral to religious sects of Buddhism within Japan (As

Mt. Ontake (御嶽山): Hyakumeizan #7. 02/10/20

Well hello there! It’s been a fairly long, but also brief road to full recovery post-Mt. Tsurugi, but I’m back climbing for the foreseeable future, until the snow appears in mid-November. First of all, the mountain tackled today was not so much a mountain, but an active volcano. Mt. Ontake is 3,067 metres tall, and

The Northern Alps Series: Mt. Tsurugi (剱岳): Hyakumeizan #6. 21/06/20

Hello again everybody, it’s me again. This is the second and final day of my Northern Alps expedition this time, and although today had an incredibly unfortunate ending, it was just as unforgettable as yesterday. Mt. Tsurugi lies before me today and the extensive amount of climbing proved to be both a challenging and fantastic

The Northern Alps Series: Mt. Tate (立山): Hyakumeizan #5. 20/06/20

Hello there everybody, I bring to you the beginning part of the Northern Alps series – as I didn’t want to attempt all 13 100 famous mountains within that range in one trip! In this journey from 20/06/20-21/06/20 I set out to tackle one of the three Holy Mountains in Japan, Mt. Tate (立山、3015m), and

The Japanese Alps! Day 2: Mt. Utsugi (空木岳）Hyakumeizan #4! 30/05/2020

Hello again! This is part two of two of my expedition to the Central region of the Japanese Alps, and will follow my adventure from the base of Mt. Hōken, across the Eastern Kiso (木曽) mountain ridge, and ending at Mt. Utsugi, and then my subsequent descent. (Find part one of my Alps trip here:

Mt. Horai (蓬莱山) via. The Kojorou Trail (小女郎峠）- 05/05/2020

Hello everybody. This is my first post via a blogging format, so apologies if it’s a bit jumbled in places, I’ll try to not ramble on for hours. So, on the 5th of May Kyoto was blessed with fairly good weather, and I decided to go and visit Mt. Horai, a 1,174 metre elevation mountain,