Dando-san (1152m), Aichi Prefecture, Japan

Toyohashi Alpine Club
Mountaineering in Japan

Dando-san (1152m)

Aichi prefecture, Japan
March 1996
Report by Darren DeRidder
Party: Solo climb

[Note: Dando-san is now commonly known as Takanosu-yama]

It's too bad but there really aren't any high mountains in Aichi. I always felt that if it was under 3000 meters it wasn't a "real" mountain and wasn't worth climbing. I'd set my sights on climbing Japan's ten highest mountains, all of which are 3000er's and didn't want to spend too much effort on other stuff. But there are times when you just need to get out and do something. You can't go climb a 3000 meter mountain every weekend. Having Mondays off, I sometimes get caught with nothing to do and no one to do it with. Well, there's always the apartment to clean, but that doesn't count.

On this particular Monday I really wanted to go out and do something. Iain's various trampings around in the Toyohashi area, which involved climbing a number of small mountains, had an effect on my opinion of climbing mountains under 3000 meters, as I read some of his reports about his climbs of mountains like Horai and so on. They can be a lot of fun.

A couple years back, one of my students gave me a book called "100 mountains in Aichi" which he wrote. The problem is it's all in Japanese. I can at least look at the pictures, and find the places on the little map. Comparing it with my road atlas, I can figure out where things are. Anyway, from my previous experience at Ibukiyama, I knew there was another mountain or two over 1000 meters up north of Asuke. Dando san is around 1100 meters and isn't the highest in Aichi, but could well be the second highest. Looking at it in the book it seemed to be a nice mountain in a really nice place. I got a bit of a late start, packed very lightly, although I took along my "new" ice pick which an old fellow gave me at Nanzan a couple weeks before. Finding Dando-san took some careful map reading, but surprisingly I managed to get there, using the road map combined with the hand-drawn map in the hiking book, without any detours. There was a fair bit of snow around on the ground at the trail head, which started as a snowy road that I didn't want to risk in my car. It was still pretty cold. The road crossed a little concrete bridge at one point and a stream ran under it, fanning out over a wide flat shelf of red rock on the lower side. Soon I came to a little spillway on the right where the water was still frozen into an icefall, and I played around with placing my pick in the ice. It's a tubular pick and requires a sideways twist to remove. If I'd brought crampons, I would've attempted to climb the thing, but as it was I only had my Hi-Tec hikers on, which are basically high top tennis shoes with lug soles.

I used the map in the book and found the actual trail right about where it should've been. There were just a few tracks going up it. It looked like maybe three people had been up it since the last snowfall. In a few minutes I came to a sort of bridge over a stream which was made of rotting logs and covered in pretty deep snow. Here I just about stepped right through into the water, when I stepped on a snowy spot and found there was no wood support underneath! On closer inspection, I saw another footprint sized hole that actually did go right through, and judging from the way the tracks sort of disappeared after the bridge, guessed that whoever had been up here had stepped through into the water and gone back. There were a few footprints still, but after another few minutes of walking up over the snow, they took a wrong turn and disappeared. I had a little trouble finding where the real trail was at the point where the tracks left it, since the snow was untouched except for golf-ball sized holes all over that I finally figured out came from little clumps of snow falling off the branches of the trees. Once I was onto "fresh" snow, I had to watch out for the trail a bit more carefully, but it was pretty easy to read where it was from the angle of the ground, depressions in the snow or spots where the snow had actually melted. There were also plastic marker ribbons tied at intervals along the less obvious parts of the trail.

All was peaceful. And white. The air was crisp and cool. I knew I was completely alone, and felt none of the suspicion of creatures lurking in the dark woods that I felt on Ibukiyama.

Although it was overcast, the bright snow made everything clear to see. The trail got progressively steeper, and I finally had to pull out my ice pick again and use it like a mountaineering axe. It was really too short, but it worked. The slope was pretty steep and was covered with water ice under a layer of snow. Without crampons I had to balance and pick my way up it like a man with a metal detector going through a minefield. A few of the slender cedar trees turned out to be good hand and footholds. I'd reach up for one and then plant my foot behind the trunk to make sure I wouldn't slide anywhere. This went on for a couple hundred meters and then the slope angled down a bit, and in place of the young cedar trees, there was the familiar bamboo grass that covers ridgetops at about this altitude. Coming up onto the ridge I hit a more heavily used trail that connected the summit on my right with another way down on my left. I checked the map and found that there was good reason why the trail seemed to be more heavily used - it was lot more accessible. The way I had come, using familiar old route 153, had taken me up and around behind the mountain. My trail had then wound even further around the side of the mountain, until I was finally approaching the summit from exactly the opposite side I had parked my car on. It was like a big upward spiral starting in Miyoshi and ending at the top of Dando-san. In spite of the trail being more difficult, I was glad to have taken the less traveled path. The snow was nicer than mud, and it was mysteriously quite and peaceful back down in the gully I had climbed out of. The summit was one of your standard clearing-and-a-signboard Japanese mountain tops. The only view was to the north, and unfortunately the cloud cover totally hid any views there might have been of the North Alps or Ontake. I suspect that there would be some super views in fine weather though. I tried to look through my binoculars, but although I could see some of the forests, buildings, and rice paddies down below, I couldn't see through the cloud cover on to where the mountains should have been.

After a quick snack and a look at my compass, I was off back down the way I had come. It was a solitary walk back, made interesting again by the steep icy slope just below the ridge. I simply followed my own footprints back the way I had come, past the false turn and the dangerous bridge, and out onto the snowy road, then past the ice-fall where I played around a bit more, smashing away at it violently with my pick. I noticed that in places where I had hit the ice, there would sometimes be cracks or fissures created which hadn't shattered and were clear through the smooth transparent ice, and the light was being refracted through them to form a rainbow mixture of colours in the ice like gas on a puddle of water. I took a picture of it and then walked slowly back. The way back usually seems a lot longer than the way in, but this time, the hike back out went quickly. I paused for a picture of the mountain at the bridge where the stream fanned out over the red rock shelf, and then got the car and drove home.

The roads were a little confusing on the way out, but it was still daylight, and I just headed in the general direction, noticing familiar points along the way as reassurance. I got home feeling proud to have one more mountain under my belt even if it was small and having enjoyed myself quite a lot. I didn't meet or talk to a single soul on the whole trip. I was perfectly alone, and I was even alone again at my apartment, and the whole experience I have shared only with myself until now that I have shared it with you.