I left Tokyo a week ago today. It was the usual affair; an early start after a late end the night before. A crowd of good friends gathered at Renald’s apartment behind the Canadian embassy, and we drank and ate, and watched slides I had taken over my 4 year’s in the IAC.
The photos I took at the party are now uploaded so you can see them here.
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Our weekend in Yamagata was a great success. Kanako, Yukiko, Isabelle, Arika and Renald joined me for 3 days of snowshoeing. We drove up on Friday night, arriving just before 2 am. Okuyama-san roused us early next morning for hot breakfast, and we then set off for our first snowshoe adventure.
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The GR10 will be the longest walk I do this year. 900 kms over about 45 days. That’s 20kms a day for 45 days.
To keep everyone informed, I have created a map with my route plotted out. You can see where I will be each day, and also click each stop to see a Mapquest map of the local area, great for anyone coming to meet me en route!
See the map.
My last IAC trip before I leave Japan will be to Yamagata, in the north-east of Japan. We are staying at Pole Pole, deep in the mountains near the Japan Sea coast. We went there in December for the New Year holiday, and had a wonderful time.
Photos from December.
I took Bill and four friends to Yatsugatake for snowshoeing during his visit.
We stayed at the “Owl” lodge, “Fukuro-no-yado”、and spent two days snowshoeing up high on the top of Yatsugatake.
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Meakan-dake is a mountain in Eastern Hokkaido. We went by snowshoe from the car park at the hot spring and headed straight to the top. However, the last part near the top on the northern side is too steep for snowshoes, so we went around to the south, and then climbed from there. There is a fabulou 360 degrees panorama from the top.
On the way down, we took too long in the deep snow, so it was dark when we got to the lake. Stay on the path on the northern side of this lake.
GPS tracks:
Mapsource GDB file
GPX file
This is a route description for the hike I did in September 2004 in Tatev, Armenia, with Tzovig and Karen. At the end are GPS tracks of my route.