Hyakumeizan: Climbing Japan's 100 Famous Mountains

I left Tokyo with a few friends long before the sun came up and started on the trail around 8 a.m. Everyone was groggy from l...

I get off the bus at Miyagi Station and begin my two-hour walk to the Asosan trailhead. I am well rested, my pack feels less heav...

“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...

For two weeks I had been in the South Alps, working as hut staff. Preparing pre-sunrise breakfasts and early dinners left little ...