CHAPTER 29: Lake Akan & Meakan

CHAPTER 29: Lake Akan & Meakan

Although I originally planned for Hokkaido Nature Tours to provide me with only transport and guides for the climbs of Hokkaido’s hyakumeizan peaks, the company’s founder, Ido Gabay, constructed my itinerary in a way that not only maximized my chances of success (an important consideration, given my aggressive timeframe) but transformed the necessary “rest and travel days” into opportunities to experience much more of Hokkaido than I dared to hope for.

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CHAPTER 28: Takuto & Tomuraushi

CHAPTER 28: Takuto & Tomuraushi

September 13-14, 2018 This photo supplement tracks the events in CLIMB: Leaving Safe and Finding Strength on 100 Summits in Japan. The captions offer “extra features” that didn’t make it into the book. Due to straining my knee on Tokachidake, I ended up canceling the next day’s scheduled climb of Poroshiri–which meant I absolutely would not be able to complete all 100 Hyakumeizan peaks in a single year. I’d already decided to shift the goalpost, however, and climb 100 historically and culturally important/sacred mountains instead, so the loss meant less to me than it otherwise would have. After a rest day, which

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CHAPTER 27: Tokachidake

CHAPTER 27: Tokachidake

September 11, 2018 This photo supplement tracks the events in CLIMB: Leaving Safe and Finding Strength on 100 Summits in Japan. The captions offer “extra features” that didn’t make it into the book. On the morning of September 11, my Hokkaido Nature Tours guide (who I’d christened the Yamabushi) and I drove approximately 200 kilometers from Sapporo to Daisetsuzan National Park in Central Hokkaido–home to some of the tallest mountains in Hokkaido, including our target for the day: 2,077-meter Tokachidake (Mt. Tokachi). What look like “normal” cumulus clouds in the photo above are actually clouds of smoke and steam rising from the

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100 Summits: Nihon Hyakumeizan 2018!

100 Summits: Nihon Hyakumeizan 2018!

Happy New Year, everyone! Now that 2018 is upon us, I’m officially launching My 100 Summits Project: Nihon Hyakumaeizan 2018! As I mentioned in December, I’m under contract to climb and write a book about the Nihon Hyakumeizan (100 Famous Mountains of Japan) as described in Kyūya Fukada’s 1964 mountaineering book by the same name. Fukada’s book has inspired generations of Japanese mountaineers (and many from other countries around the world) to climb his “Hundred Famous Peaks” – which Fukada selected on the basis of their history, beauty, and essential “Japanese” character.   The world record for climbing all 100 peaks is

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