Masterclass on Karamatsu

Learning the arts of high-mountain survival with a sensei of snowholes

Although Karamatsu-dake is not one of the original One Hundred Mountains of Japan, it does feature in the “New Hyakumeizan” listing that favours easier-to-reach mountains for Japan’s silver generation. This distinction it owes to the Happo ski resort’s lifts that waft you straight to 1,800 metres from the valley floor. The summit looks out towards rugged Tsurugi, one of the most alpine views in all Japan. And the long straggling ridge holds its snow into April, making it the ideal venue for a combined snow holing and mountain photography weekend.

I’m not sure why Matsuo-san had decided to instruct us in the art of digging in. It could be that his fatherly instincts were prompted by an incident on Yatsugadake where two Workmen Alpinists were benighted while working down a steep gully. They'd saved themselves from freezing by excavating a shelter in a snow wall with their ice-axes and a teaspoon.

Be that as it may, nobody could be better qualified to teach snow holing. Matsuo-san is a true Setsudo Hakase, a doctor of mid-winter bivouacs. In his younger days, he had overnighted in deeply cryogenic places like the summit of Kashimayari, there to await and record the year’s first sunrise.

Here was why we needed those lifts. To combine his twin passions of snowholing and photography, Matsuo-san had brought along so much gear that he had to turn his skis into a makeshift sledge. So we set out looking more like a trans-Antarctic survey than a party of weekend ski-tourists. A damask fold of cloud curled over the nearby summits as we started out, adding to the expeditionary feeling.

There was no need to go far. Picking a likely looking snowbank on the lee, southward side of the ridge, Matsuo-san snapped together a sonde and demonstrated how to probe for a suitable depth of snow. Evidently, the snow was not only deep enough but had good holding powers too – the lower half of the probe stayed embedded in the drift.

We set to work under a hot spring sun. Some snowholing precepts you’ll read in all the manuals – site the door on the downwind side (almost automatic when digging into a lee slope), and angle the entry way slightly upwards, so as to trap warm air in the dwelling. Others are obvious when you think about it – mark out your territory by parking your skis around it, unless you want an unexpected guest to come crashing through the roof at dinner time.

One point: if you’re building a snowhole for five, then snow shovels are, quite literally, not going to cut it. You might get away with them in fluffy early-season snow, but for the sterner consistencies of spring névé, you’re going to need snow-saws, the sharper and toothier the better. Saw the snow into blocks, and lift out with the snow shovels.

Brandishing our new snow-saws like the finest Gassan blades, we took it in turns to tunnel. Quickly we discovered another key principle of snowholing – allow plenty of time. A comfortable five-person bivvy is going to take three to four hours of unremitting labour to finish. So forget about leaving it until nightfall to start work.

Once we’d roughed out the sleeping chamber, Matsuo-san took a large sheet of thin polythene and pinned it to the ceiling with small bamboo pegs – a lightweight solution to the usual irk of unrefined snowholes, which is water dripping from the roof. Remember you read this tip here first.

Even in spring, the temperature on Karamatsu drops suddenly once the sun sinks below the ridge. It was time to test our new abode. Leaving our packs in the vestibule, we snake-crawled inside one by one – yes, the ceiling was low, but no more humiliating than the average teahouse. The Yamato Nadeshiko, like a Heian lady disappearing behind a screen, took up residence in a far corner; possibly she found the company too raucous.

Well exercised by the sawing and shovelling, we slept soundly in our quiet subnivean cocoon. How quietly we didn’t fully appreciate until next morning, when we compared notes with two friends who’d overnighted on the ridge above – slatting and flapping in the stiff night wind, their tent had been as lively as a Roppongi tavern, and they hadn’t had a wink of sleep. Not a wink.

Snowholes, though ... you gotta dig them.

Mountain photography in yellow brick mode

Camera review: wading with a Weathermatic up the wildest river in the Japan Alps

Ah, the joys of yestergear. Yes, you read that right – I mean, today’s gear gets plenty of attention from Bre’er Hendrik and many other puissant hiking and mountaineering bloggers.

But what about the kit that Workmen Alpinists used twenty years ago? Who’s going to write about that? Well, I guess I’ll have to fill the gap myself, starting with a review of the Minolta Weathermatic Dual 35 (above). This, for the benefit of youthful readers, was an imaging device that captured light on a chemical-smeared synthetic substrate. We called it “film”.

As I had to get my Weathermatic in a hurry, from Yodobashi Camera’s pullulating multi-storey emporium in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, I probably paid close to the full list price of ¥36,800. Back home, I unpacked what looked like a yellow brick, solid as a bank vault, with an armoured window jutting from its front casing.

“Your Minolta Weathermatic DUAL 35 is a fully waterproof 35mm camera that is designed so that you can take pictures anywhere you go,” I read in the instruction leaflet. Apparently, I was the proud owner of “the world’s first waterproof camera that lets you select either standard (35mm) or tele (50mm) lenses at the touch of a button.”

I needed a waterproof camera because Sawa Control had just invited me on his return match with the fearsome Kurobe River, a multi-day swimming and scrambling expedition through the upper reaches of Honshu’s wildest mountain river gorge. No ordinary camera was going to survive this epic. And even the Weathermatic’s creators seemed to have their doubts.

“The Weathermatic DUAL 35’s watertight seals and rugged body are designed so that you take pictures in any weather and anywhere,” the manual says, “however, special attention must be given to the following precautions:”

In the event, the river let us off lightly - there was no need to surf or dive.  In just two days, we made it all the way through the Kurobe’s “inner corridor” to the hut in Yakushi-sawa. Perhaps we relaxed too much. On the second day, I tripped over in a boulder field, falling on top of the camera. The Weathermatic wasn’t even scratched; it was my ribs that came away with contusions.

But can this yellow brick actually take pictures? Eccentrically, the camera works only with two film speeds – ASA 100 or 400. I opted for 400-speed Fuji slide film, as river gorges can be dark and gloomy. Alas, the Provia proved a touch too fast in brightly lit places, where some pictures came out overexposed.

Where it mattered, though, the Weathermatic’s metering was spot on. The photo above shows Sawa Control moving pack-awash through a deep channel. Note how the film manages to capture the shadowed foreground without getting completely burned out by the sunlit rocks behind. That’s a trick that digital sensors still struggle to emulate.

Sharpness, said Henri Cartier-Bresson, is a bourgeois concept. Weathermatic users are compelled to agree. In anything less than the brightest light, this lens is what Ansel Adams would call a fuzzy-wuzzy. It harasses the light a little as it passes by; its zones of confusion would extend beyond the planet Pluto. It is, in short, an optic of the Anti-Leica.

Does it matter, though? To my mind, the unsharp image (right) does honour to the way that the late-afternoon light shimmered off the river as we worked our way towards that first day’s bivouac site. On the other hand, National Geographic is never going to beat a path to your door if you use a Weathermatic.

On the fourth and final day of our expedition, we went home over Washiba-dake. The camera’s metering coped well with all manner of lighting, from the pre-dawn airglow over Yari, through fogbows above the clouds, to the gloom of forest glades on the long, straggling ridge that we descended. Only the flower pictures were a bust – the autofocus couldn’t cope with close-up subjects.

After this trip, though, the crappy lens, the limited zoom (35mm or 50mm, but nothing in between), and the sketchy autofocus meant that the Weathermatic stayed at home whenever I could get away with something less robust. On our second visit to the Kurobe, three years later, I took along one of the newfangled Pentax Zoom WR90s, which had a proper zoom lens and better metering.

My last outing with the Weathermatic was a winter climb on Yatsu-ga-take. The last pitch of Sekison Ridge takes you into a steeply angled lava tube, almost like a miniature subway tunnel, except that the roof had fallen in. I was halfway up this defile when the rope came tight – we’d run out of slack, and Mike, belaying 50 metres below, couldn’t hear my shouts for him to come up.

For a moment, it looked as if an unstructured situation might develop. Jammed in my tube like a Northern Line train in the London Underground, I could move neither up (no rope) nor down (too steep). Spindrift came blasting up the tunnel, driven by a fierce cold northerly. The last piece of protection was far below. A giant chock was desperately needed, to slot into the only wide crack within reach. Unfortunately I had no such gear with me. Unless, perhaps, the camera would fit.

Before the Weathermatic could be put to this ultimate test, Mike moved up and the rope came free. So I never did find out how this most bombproof of cameras might function as a makeshift bong. No, not that kind of bong. In our day, a bong was a kind of expanded piton made of folded aluminium, specially shaped for off-width cracks. Really, is it necessary to spell out everything for the youth of today?

Was Walter Weston a gear freak?

Or, how to kit yourself up for mountain action in mid-Meiji Japan

Must admit, I'm a sucker for those lightweight hiking kit reviews over there on Bre'er Hendrik's blog. Same with Ken Rockwell's ruminations on cameras. (Ladies, excuse us - this is a guy thing.) But the other day, this gear fixation got me wondering. Was it ever thus?

The compleat mid-Meiji alpinists: super-guide Kamijo Kamonji (left) and
mountaineering missionary Walter Weston (right)

Maybe it was. I mean, you'd expect an Anglican missionary of the late Victorian age to be above such crass materialism. Yes, it's Walter Weston (1861-1940), I'm talking about here. And, to be sure, most of his best book is admirably free of commentary on the latest kit. He just gets on with his Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps (1896).

But, wait a moment, there in Chapter XVI - "Hints on Outfit, Provisions, etc" - out comes Walter Weston's inner nerd. And surely we hear a note of self-exculpation in his preamble: "As it has been intimated that some hints on travel in the higher mountain districts of Japan might be profitably added, a few suggestions are accordingly offered in the hope that they may be of use to those whose experience has not yet reached to the districts remote enough from the beaten tracks to need a little special care and preparation for travel of a rougher kind than that to which the ordinary visitor is accustomed."

Now Bre'er Hendrik himself couldn't have put that more eloquently.

Footwear for "districts remote enough from the beaten tracks to need
a little special care and attention"

Not that these hints aren't worth listening to. When it comes to dress, Weston was onto layering a century before Mark Twight, and with so much more style: "a Norfolk jacket with plenty of pockets, and loose knickerbockers of a strong grey flannel will be found serviceable, whilst for underwear the lightest and thinnest woollen, or silk-and-woollen, vests and shirts are best, since there is less risk of getting a chill after being over-heated. The best material for this is that made by Dr. Jaeger's Company."

Best for ordinary walking

He also gave straw sandals a try, as still used by sawa traditionalists: "The waraji give a better foothold on smooth rocks than hob-nailed boots, but the latter are best for ordinary walking." The blue-cotton gaiters known as kiya-han also get a good review, as they "afford much more protection to the legs than woollen stockings when a way has to be made through the rough undergrowth so often found on the lower slopes of the mountains."

As for bivouacs, Weston's solution could be even lighter than CJW's minimalist set-up: "In such cases a good substitute for a tent can be made by means of three large pieces of strong oiled paper. One piece is shaped by folding it over a line stretched between two uprights, and the other two are tied to it by strings fastened on the edges."

Not needed if you have oiled paper

Yet, there's a limit to how far he's willing to adopt local methods. OK, the "native kōri", a kind of wicker basket (you can get yours here), is convenient for carrying "provisions, books, instruments etc". But for everything else, "the Swiss rück-sack is far better". Same with lighting: "A railway reading-lamp is a great boon when in country places, where the native lamps are usually of a poor kind; and it is far more satisfactory also than the native chōchin when walking has to be done at night on strange roads or rocky hillsides."

Rück-sacks are better

Now we cut to the chase: "The question of food is, to most persons, of considerable importance." Can't argue with that, though not everybody will share the good missionary's British tastes: "Bovril makes a capital soup, and where hot water for this cannot be got, Valentine's meat juice, with a little cold water, is a valuable stimulant." Also on the menu is Halford's curried fowl, and De Jongh's cocoa "for those who care for that kind of drink."

Regarding trail mix, "A handful of good prunes, raisins, or dates may be put into the pocket at the beginning of a climb, the last being especially sustaining as well as tasty during the walk." Much cheaper than PowerBars too.

For costs, alas, have surged between Weston's day and ours. Away from the main thoroughfares, he advises, "innkeepers usually charge from 15 to 40 or 50 sen for hatago ('supper, bed, and breakfast'), though a chadai is of course expected in addition." Compare that with a crisp ten thousand yen note for a single hatago in today's mountain huts. One sen was worth 100th of a pre-inflation yen, you will recall.

Giving gaijin mountaineers a bad name

Fall out with your host, though, and you probably have only yourself to blame: "One generally finds that on many of the highways of foreign travel in Japan, the manners of the innkeepers, &c, are extremely objectionable. There may be other explanations, but one certainly is this:- the lack of politeness and courtesy too often shown by the foreign traveller himself, the repetition of which in succeeding instances comes at last to be reflected in the unmannerly behaviour of the innkeeper himself."

Now there is a hint that's timeless. And it isn't even about the gear.