Mountain: Kinunuma (鬼怒沼) 2,141m
Closest station: Kinugawa-Onsen Closest bus stop: Meotobuchi
Mt. Kinunuma is known for it's high altitude wetlands, as well being located in the furthest remote regions of Nikko National park. On the way to Kinunuma there are many sights including a secret hot spring, frozen waterfalls, and a boardwalk.
Because of the incredible remoteness of the mountain, I took a late night train up to Utsunomiya station and stayed at a cheap business hotel the night before. This city is famous for it's delicious fried dumplings, which I just had to try out for dinner, before going to bed as early as possible. The next morning, I met the hiking sensei Naoyasu, who came by the hotel at about 4:15am. We drove for a couple hours along the pitch black mountain roads until we reached the snow covered Meotobuchi parking lot by around 6:20am. We set up our gear while still inside the car, and by the time we were ready to go, the first hint of light started to shine.
It grew light extremely quickly, revealing the breathtaking snow covered landscape before us. The trail to Mt Kinunuma is not so vertical, but a long +8 hour trek deep into the furthest regions of Nikko. Along the way we followed the Kinu River and passed by many interesting sights including frozen waterfalls, snow covered cliffs, as well as one of the most secluded hot spring villages in Japan. After passing over a frozen bridge and along valley, we arrived at the hot spring village by around 8:30am and took a short break.
After departing from the hot spring village, the two of us continued along the lengthy & snowy trail, and finally started seeing some incline. Our next challenge was to ascend the long hill that leads up towards the wetlands. The snow had already started to pile on, and it seemed we might be in for a blizzard. This wouldn't have been the first time the two of us had be caught in bad weather conditions, as the year before we experienced an even worse winter snowstorm on Nasudake, and the year before that we climbed Mt. Nikko-Shirane during a typhoon. Our real concern was whether or not the wetlands could be traversed or not. If too much snow had piled on and covered the boardwalk, the area would be impossible to traverse. But since we couldn't know for sure until we actually got there, we decided to keeping trudging forward through the heavy snow. Sure enough, when we finally reached the entrance to the wetlands atop the hill, there was nothing but a thick layer of snow covering everything into the horizon. I took a step forward and sunk a meter. So, we both knew this was as far as we could go.
We descended back down the hill slowly. The snow was very thick and took us a lot longer to walk through then expected. By the time we had reached a more flatter road, our slow pace had cost us a lot more time, and we realized it would be impossible to reach the parking lot before nightfall.
As we were both very cold and tired from our journey, Mr Naoyasu decided it was best to rent a room at the secret hot spring ryokan we passed by earlier. I must say, I was extremely impressed by the place. Unlike most remote mountain lodging, this cabin was less targeted towards hikers and more aimed for couples or families wanting an exquisite and secluded nature getaway. For dinner, they served a large variety of traditional Japanese cuisine as well as nabé (Japanese hot pot stew) featuring local wild boar meat. We both crashed pretty early, as we still had about 2 hours of early morning trekking before the long trip back to home.
I awoke just before 5:00am and went outside to enjoy the "rotenburo" (an outdoor natural hot spring). I had a clear view of the stars above, and refreshed my body in the warm natural mineral waters surrounded by the cool winter landscape. We left the lodge just after 6 o'clock and made our way back to the parking lot within about 90 minutes. Here, after trekking over 10 hours across a rugged, snowy mountain landscape without any incident, I injured myself by slipping on some black ice and bumping my head and elbow on the ground while buying a cup of canned coffee in the parking lot. Fortunately it wasn't anything serious. Naoyasu gave me a lift back to the city, and then I took a train back to Tokyo. It still wasn't over though... while transferring at Ebisu station, I left my backpack on the train, and had to ride all the way to the last stop, Hiratsuka station, which added another 2 hours onto my journey and was not fun at all. So my final word of advice for this trip is, don't underestimate just how remote Kinunuma is and give yourself plenty of time to get there & back. Also, always watch out for black ice, even when you think the danger is over.
Comments