*cue Fantasia music*

This past weekend I headed down to Sapporo once again to go on another hike but this time up Sapporo-dake with a guide, Leon, who does guided hikes all over Hokkaido. We started out in Sapporo on Saturday afternoon and took an hour bus ride outside the city. We drove through a small place called Jozankei Onsen which is an tourist onsen resort with tons of hotels and really famous onsen.. and where I'm definitely going back to in the winter. We got dropped off a few minutes outside of the resort and walked a little further up the road until we got to the trailhead. We started out a bit later on this hike than other hikes so it was around 2:30pm by the time we got there. It was okay though since it was only a two hour hike to the hut where we were staying that night. It's normally closed this time of the year but we had it booked for our group specially for this hike. It was a fairly easy trail so Leon let me take the lead and we were off. The weather stayed beautiful and it didn't rain that day so it was a nice, quick hike to the hut.

At the pace we were going we managed to reach the hut in a little over an hour instead of two and dusk was just beginning to settle by the time we got inside. The hut was a two-story building at the base of a steep incline in the middle of the mountains. The main floor had a big stove, a kitchen, a few tables and benches. There was also a little bathroom (basically a hole with a 5 foot drop) just inside the main enterance where we put our shoes. Up a really steep staircase (you basically have to climb like a ladder) was the second floor with two rows of padded flooring along both sides of the room. The middle of the room was open to the downstairs and was right above where heat from the stove could waft up. There were wooden racks and railings above the hole where we could hang our clothes to dry. We put down our packs, got our beds ready for the night and by the time we were done it was pitch dark out.

In our group we had seven people, four of us being JETs, a married couple from Sweden and our guide, Leon. The hike was advertised as an easy level 'Friendship overnight hike' and there was to be a Halloween party that night in the hut. Wenger - the maker of Swiss Army Knives - was sponsoring the hike so there were prizes for the best costume. Me and Callie had decided to dress up for it, her in her pirate costume again and me as a proper mummy this time (no more damn toilet paper!). We really wanted to win those prizes but we didn't have to worry because, again, we were the only ones to dress up for it! I didn't wrap up my entire body since it would've been too much of a hassle so I decided to wear my jacket and brought just enough bandages to wrap my head and hands. I ended up looking more like a burn victim than a mummy.

Leon had provided the supper for that night, carrying it all in his pack up the trail. He even brought up some Halloween decorations to put up on the walls, Halloween party hats and a flashing pumpkin. We had nabe that night, which is a big boiling pot of chicken base broth where you put in different vegetables, meat and udon noodles to let them cook before dipping it in a peanut sauce.. mmmmm. Since there were so few of us (there was supposed to be 13 of us in total but 5 people dropped out at the last minute), Leon decided to give us all prizes but we had to Janken (rock, paper, scissors) for the good ones. I managed to win a swiss army knife and a leather notebook. After that we brought out a deck of cards and the swedish couple taught us a swedish card game (gimme the box!). Then we played a few more games and just sat around and chatted until 11:00pm. After that we went to bed in our sleeping bags, but not before having a before-bed chat about spooning, toe-sucking and other various things.

We woke up the next day with the sun and had breakfast which consisted of the broth we had the night before. Leon boiled up some noodles and added more meat and vegetables and it made a nice warm meal for the hike that day. It had rained during the night and it was still raining by the time we got out of there so we were looking at a pretty wet hike. We ate, packed up all of our stuff, cleaned up the hut, geared up and were off at 8:30am. I took the lead again and we headed up the steep incline I mentioned earlier. The mountain was at 45 degrees for most of the time and it continued that way basically until we reached the peak. It was quite the workout for that early in the morning! For 1 km of the hike, we were literally hiking up the middle of a river stream, jumping from rock to rock. The rain didn't help that much either. Despite the fact that we were walking in mud, water, and up a steep mountainside, I thought it was the most enjoyable park of the hike! When I hike, its really tough for me at first since my body is trying to catch up to all the extertion I'm putting on it, but after half an hour or so I get into a groove and my breathing calms down and I stop sweating. That's when I'm in the zone and can keep going for hours and hours and we reached the peak in a a brisk two hours. The rain clouds were really low that day that we were standing right in them at the peak. We couldn't see 20 feet in any direction. It was also really windy, wet, and cold so we missed out on the great views that Leon told us about. We rested, ate some snacks and took pictures there before continuing on down the other side of the mountain.

When I mentioned how steep the mountain was on the way up, if you can imagine it, it was even steeper on the way down! It was nuts! I would say more than a 50 degree decline. I could walk forward a few meters, look back and see the others over 10 meters above my head! We were slipping and sliding through the mud and down the mountainside for the good part of an hour. There were some parts of the trail that provided ropes so we wouldn’t slide down the entire way. We grabbed onto anything and everything we could from little shoots of bamboo to overhanging branches but it still wasn't enough to prevent the muddy bums we got by the end of it. After about two hours down the mountain we decided to stop and take a rest for lunch. I really had to take a #2 at that point so I did the only thing you could do in that situation.. trek into the trees with a roll of toilet paper in hand.

It was still another hour or so by the time we reached the main road where we would catch our bus to make it back into Sapporo. On the way there we walked past a really, really random Halloween festival at some sort of valley zoo. What caught our eye was a huge inflatable pumpkin so we went and walked up to the fence. When we took a closer look we saw all different kinds of animals, from big python snakes to pelicans and owls and even a little beaver pond. It cost 1000 yen ($10) to go in so we decided not to. We stayed there for another ten minutes before continuing up the road. When we got to the bus stop we only had to wait another ten minutes before the bus arrived. Luckily we didn’t arrive ten minutes later or else we would’ve had to wait another 45 minutes! The other five took the bus to Sapporo station and me and Callie took a bus that came seven minutes later to take us to a different train station.

Unfortunately there was no onsen at the end of this hike.. I was a little sad. I felt dirty and exhausted but had to wait until we got back home to take a shower. There was no time to rest though because we were back out the door to see a movie that the Banff International Film Festival (!) was putting on that night only. When we got there the doors weren’t open yet so we waited for our friend who had bought the tickets for us. Once she came and we got in there were a bunch of “Visit Alberta” pamphlets and booklets promoting the Rockies. Ahhh… how I miss them. The movies we saw were a collection of short films about extreme skiing, a rock climbing photographer, extreme white-water rafting, speed flying and a 50 minute film about an insanely good rock climber looking for the most “extreme line”. They were all pretty good films but I would’ve enjoyed them more if I wasn’t so exhausted and wind burned.

It was a good weekend and I definitely got my fix of hiking and the outdoors. My legs are still aching from it but its the good kind of sore. I'm hoping to do maybe one more hike this weekend before the snow descends and ends the autumn hiking season for good. After that it'll be time to strap on my boots and slide down mountains instead of walking up them!