JAPAN'S BEST ALPINE TRIPS BEGIN HERE
IT’S THE YEAR WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR. DRY & COLD, THE FLANKS OF KAIKOMAGATAKE ARE IN THE BEST CONDITION THEY HAVE BEEN FOR YEARS WITH GOOD ICE EVERYWHERE. ANYONE LOOKING TO GO INTO KAIKOMAGATAKES ‘LOST KINGDOM’ IS ADVISED TO SADDLE UP. THE APPROACH HAS CHANGED, MAKING IT QUICKER WITH LESS WANDERING AROUND, AND ICE FALLS…
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every year we get requesting to join expeditions to tibet, china, turkistan, iran etc. most requests begin with something similar along the lines of the grades they climb and some names of routes, peaks and locations. climbers a bit more switched on then say how many days out a year climbing they do. yes these…
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THE 2018/19 ICE CLIMBING JAPAN SEASON WILL BE ON THE ROAD 3 weeks, 100s of kms, dozens of ice climbing locations departing from our usual way of doing things, this upcoming winter will use the climbing mainstay – the road trip. rolling the length of Honshu, this is the ice climbing aficionados trip going thru…
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golden week is here. the highways are jammed, the trains are booked out and the carparks are full. Yatsugatake’s Ice Candy. perhaps in Honshu’s most stable winter environment at 2200m in a shaded amphitheater, its usually still pretty solid in late April. photo from the Akadake Kosen blog. every year it seems winter gets a…
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2015/16 was a strange winter. conditions were strange, the atmosphere was strange, the locations were strange. it may be part of a greater cycle…or maybe its not. to go with the strangeness, we spread ourselves over a large spectrum this winter. avoiding being too focused in a season that had a large degree of unpredictability…
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white dragon wall: hard mixed routes like this cover large parts of japan japan has a good reputation for hard rock climbing, hard bouldering. well known climbers regularly put up world class efforts across japan and foreign climbers often come and repeat them. when japanese climbers go overseas they take this with them and do…
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finally! its been about 20 years since the last comprehensive guide to japan’s mountain routes came out, and finding them for sale has been near impossible for the last 6 or 7 years. the older versions became classics, recording much about the Japanese attitude at that time, like a time capsule of climbing at the…
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despite the volume of random single pitch ice falls, lower kaikomagatake is known for its several gully routes known as ‘runzes’ in Japanese. Presenting a mix of mixed alpine, steep ice, ice & rock steps, snow pitches and even a few cave pitches, these gullys go for 8 or 9 pitches and make a good…
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despite a good range of well known ice routes the mixed lines at lower kaikomagatake are almost never climbed. obvious and striking and right by the access road, the hardish mixed lines are short, direct, bold and powerful – earning them the name Espresso Wall. thin, techy & steep: Reed tapping his way thru the middle section…
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every winter odd little trickles of ice form around lower kaikomagatake, but this year those trickles are fatter more developed, in step with the general excellent ice conditions. shifting and transient, these ice falls change daily and will be gone by mid-winter, but for now they provide a fleeting chance for thin, technical climbing on…
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