Toyohashi Alpine Club
Mountaineering in Japan
Ena-san (2190m)
Gifu, Japan
10 July 1995
Report by Darren DeRidder
Party: solo climb
Desperate men take desperate measures. Such was the motivation underlying my climb up Ena and back. Having met Mal and Iain the previous day at Nanzan and been totally humiliated by their stories of all their training for Switzerland and how fit they were, I felt like a lazy bum. I'd done nothing in the way of training other than to get a suntan while snorkelling and sailing around the tropics (gloat, gloat). Something had to be done. Reading through Iain's excellent write-ups of some of his recent mountaineering exploits, both solo and in the company of Mr. Field, I struck upon the (not very original) plan of climbing a mountain. Monday morning rolled around and I crawled out of bed and contemplated what to do with myself for the rest of the day. Ontake was too far. I pulled out some Avenues magazines and had a look through Richard Harris' articles. I recalled reading one on Ena-san and soon found it. Close to Nagoya, a two-thousander, it was just the thing. I looked at the time. 9:30. I would really have to get moving.
I managed to leave at quarter past ten. By 11:40 I was on the Chuo expressway heading North by North-East towards Nakatsugawa. At quarter past eleven I had my first glimpse of the mountain, a huge hump-back looming in the distance, with the top wreathed in clouds and mist. I began to dread.
Harris' article kindly gave instructions for reaching the trailhead. I drove on down 363 to a very small hamlet called Kawami. There was no sign, really, but a roadside advertisement conspicuously displayed the two kanji which make up the word, and the turn-off onto a small bridge which crosses the river here is very obvious. However, once across the bridge, the road immediately forks and I took the left lane, which rose steeply uphill and then turned into a gravel track. The article had said to drive twenty minutes on a road of deteriorating quality. This was definitely deteriorating. Huge weeds grew in the center of the track, whacking the bumper and swishing underneath the car. Big rocks bounced away under the tires. Then it dead ended. I should have assumed that when he said "deteriorating" he meant it in the British sense of the word, not the Canadian sense. Back at Kawakami, I surprised a group of oba-sans by asking them where the heck I was going and having found the error of my way, set it straight by taking the right hand fork after the bridge. The road was quite long and I was beginning to wonder, but mountaineering-looking signs re-established my confidence. A roadside spring enabled me to exchange my city water for fresh mountain water and I set off again with a canteen full. The road was odd. In some sections it was quite full of pot-holes or deeply grooved where water flowed along it, cutting into the surface. In other places, it was newly paved with smooth black-top. Finally I pulled into a wide parking area at 12:35. A large signboard on one side and a gated track beside which sits a little hut marked the area. I started right off, pausing near the start of the trail to stretch out my limbs. A smaller signboard indicated there were three and a half hours of climbing to be done. Counting on my long stride, I planned to take a few short breaks along the way and still make it to the top in three and a half hours, and get back down in two. I would have to push myself though. The track followed a stream up to a concrete dam, then crossed over above it on a wooden bridge and soon turned into a narrow trail. Why they build those dams, I don't know; they seem to serve no purpose.
Since it was a fine day with the sun shining hot, I had taken off my shirt. I carried the bare essentials in my pack - rainjacket, nylon trousers, food, water and sundry items. I passed an old hut which is quite worn down but could provide adequate shelter from a storm. From here the path climbed up through some steep sections which had me sweating profusely. The intermittent flat stretches were such a relief. Harris wrote of this trail as being so lovely and enjoyable as to make the effort of ascending it negligible. B.S.
After an hour on the trail I stopped beside a spring for a drink of cool water. It certainly was a fine day to be out and I sat in the sun with a faint cool breeze blowing across my shoulders. I could have thoroughly enjoyed this spot had not the thought of having to descend in the dark driven me to take to the trail again.
I felt quite refreshed after my ten minute break and went strong until the trail steepened. Then all my days spent lazing on the beaches of St. John took their revenge. My legs were made of syrup. I stumbled along.
As I came huffing up a steep slope and into a stand of evergreens, a fork in the trail allowed me an excuse to stop. As I pulled out the Harris article, which was useless at this juncture I found, two fellows came along the left fork. They said both ways were the same, so I went up the path they'd come down, and found it was just a short detour to a genuinely charming little brand spanking new hut. It was 2:05 and I went into the hut and wrote a few lines in the notebook there, also noting my membership in the Toyohashi Alpine Club (Nagoya Chapter).
Leaving at a quarter past, I arrived within a minute at a pond with picnic tables! I enjoyed the scene for a few moments and then struck off again up the steep trail. The path dropped down a ways and then started climbing again with a vengeance. Suddenly I realized my meagre breakfast had long ago burned away and I needed to refuel. I could have kicked myself off the mountian for having passed up such a nice spot as the little pond for a lunch break, but told myself I would take advantage of the next inviting rest spot to come along. It was a long time in coming. Half an hour of mostly heart-pounding uphill slogging brought me to a shoulder ridge of bamboo grass over which I could see lower mountains all around. An exposed tree root turned into a lazy-boy chair in my hallucinatory state. My meagre boiled eggs and california oranges lunch tasted like steak and lobster. I glanced at my Tag Heuer chronometer. This was the first time I had worn it on a mountain. It was nearly three.
After starting off along the trail again, I passed a fellow coming down who said it was about an hour to the top. Three others followed him. I felt I must now be quite alone on my push to the summit. Along the way, little signs perversely teased me with the distance to the summit hut. Four kilometers. Three kilometers later another sign read 2.5 kilometers. The distance I was covering wasn't worth the effort I was putting into it. As I climbed up, however, sections of the trail levelled out and were really pleasant to walk along. A carpet of decaying pine needles between dark, mossy boulders and gnarled tree roots along the path were bordered by the deepest shades of sun-dappled verdant green, reminding me of the coastal rainforests of the Cascades in Oregon. I arrived at the summit hut about forty minutes after leaving my lazy-boy tree root and had a look inside. It was quite spacious, with a large entry way containing a wood-burning stove. Inside, I ate another boiled egg and had a big swig of water which had started to taste like plastic. Were it not for the Harris article here, I would have cast around a bit, as the trail to the actual summit does a sharp jacknife and swings around the side before climbing up past a couple of shrines to the summit clearing. I perched myself on the pile of boulders here but couldn't see much at all except a huge bank of cumulus clouds. Thunder roared. Great, I thought. I wondered how in the world the people at Aisan get all their freshmen employees to make this slog up to the top of Mt. Ena as a rite of initiation.
I didn't stick around long. As I walked off the summit, a lone fellow in full fly-fishing gear minus the waders plodded up. Next to him, I was naked. My spandex rock-climbing shorts I had scrunched into the smallest brief possible. I felt like he was looking at me the way I looked at that bozo who climbed Fuji in a suit and penny loafers in October when me and the other guys were decked out in head to toe gore-tex. Well, I hadn't been alone after all. At the hut, I went up the trail behind it to get a look at the view from that side. There was a shrine on the ridge a little ways along the path and I could see all around to the North, South and West. A huge storm was brewing. Thunder crashed in the distance. It seemed to be moving parallel to my intended line of travel, however.
Having satisfied myself that I could take a bearing with my new compass, I made a concentrated effort to get down as fast as I could. I took in few details as I sped down the mountain. My initial smooth gait turned into a bone-rattling controlled fall. I realized that I had climbed up a very long way. Very long indeed. Good grief where is the car park?! I passed the old hut, and telling myself I was nearly to the end, poked around it. There was a stinky toilet in the back. Well, off to the car park. More incredulous feelings came over me as the short gravel track up to the dam stretched on and on. It seemed twice as long as it had on the ascent. Abruptly I saw the clearing and my little red car parked under the big sign. It was 6:15. I'd make it to the top at 3:55, beating my estimation by 15 minutes, having taken three hours and fifteen minutes to the top with a total of thirty minutes break time included, and after spending twenty minutes at or near the top, had returned as I planned in exactly two hours. My legs and knees were quite sore, but it felt very good to have done something to get myself in shape. Something which was worth mentioning to Mal and Iain, which is in fact the reason why I am typing up this self-congratulatory report.
An old-timer camped beside his car struck up a conversation in English with me. He'd been to Canada and climbed Mount Athabasca, Mount Temple, and another (was it Robson?!). Stallion. He'd done Whitney in the States, too.
I took route 19 back to save some coin, stopping at KFC, the only recognizable restaurant along the way. Back home, getting out of the car, my knee had seized up and I almost fell down with pain. Taking a few minutes to shake it out and get limbered up, I then hobbled off to the store to buy ice cream. It tasted rewarding.
Darren DeRidder. 11 July, 1995 (Ena-san. 2190m. Climbed 10 July 1995)
