Hyakumeizan

Grappling with a slightly rusty chain bolted into the hard, cold rock, I heave myself up onto the relative safety of a flat ledge...

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...

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 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...

As I approached Mt. Tsukuba from a distance, I could see the two peaks that symbolize this mountain. The peak to the east, Nyotai...

The peak of Mt. Kuju, reaching skyward from Aso-Kuju National Park, is the highest point on Kyushu Island and is the largest acti...

“This is going to be a long three days, the tail-end of the South Alps,” I thought to myself, as I checked my bootlaces and then ...