Hakkoda Hike

The mountains just west of our house have some great hiking trails, but we seem to have questionable luck in having a successful hike out there.

This was our hike in May. It was so much colder than we were expecting, and we hadn't received all our household goods yet so we didn't have the necessary warm clothes... Since it was so cloudy anyway, we ended up turning around and going back home.

About a month after the above snowshoe/hike, Chris returned with a friend and they too had to turn around before the summit because they ran out of time.

Shortly after that, in June, Chris returned by himself (I was in the States) and found that the weather was excellent and he was able to summit all three of the summits along the trail. But on the way back down he slipped and severely sprained his right ankle. He hopped out of the woods with a makeshift crutch in the dark (what should have taken him one hour took him five). He was on crutches for a week and still, four months later, can feel the after effects of the sprain which has healed very slowly.

The Friday of Labor Day weekend, we went back for another try. It was raining when we got to the trailhead, so we napped in the car with hopes of the weather passing. When the weather let up just a little bit we started hiking... but as you can tell from the picture, we couldn't see a thing. Another less than ideal hike in the Hakkodas...

On Sunday of Labor Day weekend, we were back for yet another try. The clouds looked a little questionable, but we went for it anyway.

This is a trail map... there is a green trail marked in the center of the map that looks like a large, misshapen figure eight. We started where the red bubble with white kanji is pointing, and traveled counter clockwise around the outside of the figure eight.

The trail is a little overgrown in places...

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION!!

A lot of the trail winds through marshland, so they have boardwalks to keep you out of the swamp, and to preserve the alpine vegetation.

These hikers are crowded around a natural spring that has been built up and is clean enough to drink from without filtering. Great source of water, but it was only about an hour into the hike, so we didn't really need it.

This is on the way up to Mt. Odake... You can see that the right side of the mountain is covered in dense shrubbery and trees, but the left side is bare in comparison. This is because the left side of the mountain gets much more snow than the right side.

The views going up to Mt. Odake were great all the way until the very top... and it got pretty cloudy. But this was the highest point in our hike, so the rest of the time we were below the clouds.

Just off the peak of Odake, you can see that the clouds were just high enough to provide for some pretty great views.

Facing the next peak, Mt. Idodake. You can see the trail to the top, and then it winds along the crater rim.

Standing on the edge of the crater.

All along the crater rim, the trail was quite wide, and well defined. But this was the trail down the other side... a bit overgrown.

The branches were a little scratchy on my bare arms.

FINALLY! A beautiful hike, with beautiful weather, and beautiful views!

On top of Mt. Akakuradake, the final peak of the hike.

Huck will drink from Chris' camelback, but he prefers mud puddles.

The marshes looked so different from when we were there two days prior.

I'm not sure what this helicopter was doing. But it was fun to watch him fly back and forth over the valley.

This began the long descent to the car. No rain, no bad weather, no sprained ankles... finally a successful hike!