ginger vaughn

Nearly a decade ago I became inspired to hike the “hyakumeizan,” Japan’s one-hundred most revered mountains. I had bagged 91 peak...

“Bee-beep! Bee-beep!” It didn’t seem right the alarm was blaring in my ear at 2:30 in the morning, but that’s the standard wake-u...

My thumb does the talking to the few cars that pass my way. I walk for almost an hour when a middle-aged man with a sleepy stubby...

After a great 10-hour sleep in the empty hut on Taka-dake, my internal clock woke me at 4:30 a.m. as usual. The caretaker of the ...

It was my fifth day and mountain number two in Kyushu. Hitching a ride from an onsen in Beppu was easy and, soon enough, I was on...

It was still mid-October, but the chill in the air made me wonder if sleeping in a tent was a good idea. When I arrived at the gy...

I hear the door to the Visitor’s Center slide open as I scramble to get my things in order. Still in my sleeping bag with all...

It was my third day out in the South Alps, and I was convinced I was an “ame-onna”  (rain woman) as I had been in my rain ge...

On the ferry from Tokyo to Tokushima, a local woman told me it was a good choice to climb Ishizuchi-san, as it is the guardian an...

“A foreign girl climbing Poroshiri alone? I have lived here 50 years, and the mountain is no joke.” So said the old man at the vi...

It was the fourth day I had been traveling with Hiroshi Sakurai, who I had met while hitchhiking to Mt. Iide a few days before. I...

Right as I began to empty the contents of the tent bag on the ground, snowflakes started to come down with a flurry. “No, no, no”...