The Mountain that Wasn’t Meat to Be

Our last full day in Sapporo found Lynsey and I again getting on a train for a two-hour journey South. This time we ended up in the Niseko area with plans to hike a mountain. Neither one of us was committed to getting to the summit and had plans to turn around if the going got to tuff or the weather turned bad. We were prepared with layers, food, and extra water. Upon arriving at the JR station and checking in at the Tourism Information Center about buses to the mountain and extra information we might need about the hike, our plans changed.

The lady manning the desk didn’t speak English, so she called someone and had me speak to her. Upon informing the lady on the phone that we had plans the hike Mt. Yotei, I was met with an incredulous, “You’re going to hike it now? It takes five hours to get to the top! It’s more of a climbing mountain that a hiking trail.” As I stated earlier, Lynsey and I weren’t super set on climbing to the top or even very far up the mountain. So, we took the woman’s advice and decided to do a walk that would take us to the base of the mountain and a lake. We told each other that upon getting there, we might go up the mountain a little ways to see what it was like, but it would depend on how we felt.

We set out with our map and walked and walked and continued to walk. We didn’t realize just how far the base of the mountain was as our map had no scale. We were trying to follow the walking path that followed the river, but it was not well marked and we got a bit confused and one point. We backtracked and ended up following the highway. We stopped in a little restaurant to ask how much farther we had to go and exactly where we were on the map in relationship to the mountain and lake. The lady didn’t speak English but was able to tell us to continue going straight. So, we did.

Again we walked and walked. We came up to what we thought was the intersection we needed, but couldn’t see anywhere to turn left. Again, we were by a restaurant and thankfully one of the cooks spoke excellent English and was able to show us where we were on the map, what to look for, and how far we were from the turning point. So, we continued to walk and walk. Finally we came across our first hint that we were getting close when we passed huge sign telling us that the mountain, lake, parking, and restrooms where straight ahead.

Yotei Mountain was beautiful and very conical. As we were approaching it, Lynsey and I decided that we were pretty happy we weren’t attempting to climb it. It was very steep and we couldn’t see any trails despite us walking towards the trailhead. We visited the lake and were disappointed when we got to the bottom and discovered that there was almost no shoreline and nowhere for us to rest like we had thought. We hung out for less than five minutes before heading back. We did stop at a picnic table near the parking lot to eat a snack and drink more water. We decided we would look at the bus schedule back on the highway to take us back to the JR station. If it didn’t have any buses coming within a reasonable amount of time, we would stop by the restaurant with the English-speaking gentleman and ask him to call a taxi. Option number two ended up being the one we had to go with. I was very happy to see the taxi pull up.

We still had about two hours before our train left, so we visited another onsen. After two and a half weeks of more walking than I’ve done in years and over four hours of straight walking that morning, my feet were ecstatic to soak in the hot water. We topped our day in Niskeo off with some ice cream smoothies and hopped on the train back to Sapporo.

Morning came very early for us as we were hopping on a 6am train headed back to Tokyo. The first train was on a regular JR train that took just over 3 hours to get us from Sapporo to the Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto station. The second leg of our journey is about a 4½-hour journey on the Shinkansen line. The coolest part about this journey is that it takes us through the Seikan Tunnel to connect the island of Hokkaido to the mainland of Japan. It’s 23 km long and took us over twenty minutes to get through it. I love the train system in Japan and really hope that Texas can get the bullet train they keep talking about up and running!