One Mountain Down...

Today we climbed our first real mountain, Mount Hakkoda. This is the mountain that is behind us in the pic of us after we went bamboo picking. It has an elevation of 1,500 meters (do the math yourself!). It is a real volcano with a crater on the top but don't worry it is dormant. We went with our good friend and co-worker, John, who is also the head of the mountain-climbing club. We began the day bright and early, 6:30am!

We climbed to the top of this thing, the one in the middle. This is from the onsen (hot spring) which is at the beginning of the trail. The onsen is famous for its sulphur minerals and smelled like rotten eggs :) yummm

We stopped at a semi-halfway point in the marshlands. We were in a kind of valley surrounded by mountains. The mountain on the right is Hakkoda.

We finally reached the top, 2.5 hours later! Unfortunately it was a bit hazy out so we couldn't see Mt. Iwaki (our mountain) or Aomori from it, so here's a picture of us instead, just about as good as the scenery!

We even had to do some trekking through the snow both up and down the mountain..

Lastly, we visited Hell's gates, a little sulphur pond that is so hot it steams.

We had to ask a random taxi driver to take our picture (with Hakkoda in the distance, by the way, that is John!)