Tokyo Weekender - February 2016

Finding new ice climbing routes demands
patience, nerve, and more than a little
luck—and all that is before you even begin
your ascent...
by Ed Hannam
With its early starts,
strange equipment
and inherent dangers,
ice climbing
will never be more than a fringe
sport. Only a few months a year
conjure up the right conditions for
ice to form, climbing time doesn’t
always line up with available time,
and just when it starts getting good
the season starts to end. Changes
in the weather can upset entire
winters with too much snow or not
enough of it. Rain and sun combine
unpredictably, and it can be years
between the time when reliable ice
forms in some areas. Add this all
up and very few climbers who start
out on indoor walls will ever end up
climbing ice because it’s simply too
much hassle.
After spending years climbing
in the better known areas around
Japan, a whisper had emerged from
some older climbers about a forgotten
place “up north.” Apparently
decades before the hard men
and women of the time had
found amazing ice features
and put up a dozen or so
difficult routes. As opinion
had it, this was their undoing—the
routes were too hard for most
climbers of the day to repeat, and so
it remained the stuff of legend, an
ice climbing El Dorado. Any more
searches turned up nothing aside
from a hazy photo or two and a
vague map with little detail.
A short trip to the area (let’s call
it Yamagata) brought us into contact
with shy locals who vaguely recalled
climbers going there years ago, but
it had been silent a long time. The
only clear discussion we had was
with the owner of a decaying onsen
who reckoned that, as the roads
were cleared of snow less frequently,
everything out there—including
his onsen—was winding down.
Along with this uninspiring news he
told us that the season for ice was
only when the direction of the wind
sent temperatures way down, and
that period had already come and
gone a few weeks before.
After a long year of keeping
things quiet we returned, timing
things for the window of cold. Pulling
into the verge at the end of the
road, our headlights illuminated old
buildings, all closed and shuttered.
Beyond, the road was covered with
settled snow. No footprints were
visible. There was no reason at all
for anyone to be there, so we pitched
our tent in the eerie, howling darkness
and got our gear ready for the
morning.
Skiers dream of bright blue
FEBRUARY 2016 www.tokyoweekender.com