Another early morning departure to go hiking. I decided to re-attempt summiting Mt. Asama without snow. I left shortly before 7 am and enjoyed the empty early roads. I had such gorgeous weather this time, I could see Asama next me, getting bigger and bigger. Sadly, it’s not as pretty without snow on top. I took the same route as last time. The winding, gravel road was pretty bad without snow too because there were so many more potholes to dodge. Quite a bumpy ride. There were many other hikers this time. I didn’t encountered a lot of people on the first leg, but once I passed the evacuation shelter/hut, I came across the same people twice during my loop. They were all impressed that I was hiking alone and by how fast I was - ha, long legs I guess? I thought I was going slowly with lots of breaks!

The first stretch through the woods wasn’t fun. I almost turned around by the immense number of biting flies. I didn’t bring any bug spray with me and what started with two horseflies ended up at twenty at one point. I kept killing them so I don’t know if that attracted more. I’ve never seen such a swarm. The constant buzzing was very annoying and it made it hard to take a break since the flies would immediately descend and attack. The sun was strong and hot, but I made it to the shelter by 10:30 am, in 2 hours as planned, in less than half the time it took me with snow. The flies left me shortly before, once I passed through the valley with the sulfur river. The landscape looks completely different without snow! The biggest change was the pine tree forest ahead. I thought the trees were really short before, but half of them was covered in snow! The snow was actually much deeper than I had guessed before. The trail markers that were at our shins, were now around my head. That means almost 6 ft deep snow!

The going was super easy and quick at this point, and I reached our past turnaround point and then the junction where the trail split to go up to Asama. Sadly, I didn’t check the volcanic activity ahead of time… The alert had just been raised a week ago to level 2 and the trail up Asama was closed. So once again, Mt. Asama foiled me. Apparently, it had a small eruption earlier in the week of smoke and yesterday, a small amount of ash was deposited and caught on camera. Volcanic tremors continue to happen as well. Asama’s daily sulfur dioxide releases have been growing sharply, hitting 1,700 tons on Thursday from 500 tons on Monday. I ended up going left at the junction, following the signs for the J-Loop trail that goes along the ridgeline overlooking Asama. At this altitude, it was already much cooler and pleasant. The wind really picked up as I emerged from the treeline. Oh, it was stunning. Asama rising up on the right, windswept landscape ahead of me, and the other mountains on the left with so much green.

I ended up snacking before the steep ascent up to the ridgeline. I couldn’t believe that the trail was in front of me. It just looked like rocks! It was really fun though. I enjoy more bouldering-like hikes and the view didn’t hurt either. I had lunch at the first mountain peak, Sennindake, 2319 m. I continued crossing the ridge and hit the other two peaks, Jakotsudake, 2366 m, and Kurofuyama, 2404 m. The latter part of the trail passed in and out of the forest and hordes of gnats. I made it to the last overlook point, before descending on the other side of the ridgeline at about 2 pm. This was a rough descent as I was pretty tired and the trail was rather slippery with gravel. There were many flowers along the switchbacks down the mountain.

I made a break at the shelter to rest my aching toes, before finishing the rest of the descent. I passed by the waterfall on my way down which was bursting due to all the rain. There was even a beautiful rainbow! I got back to my car at 4:30 pm, after 8 hours of hiking including all my breaks. Not bad for 13 km with an elevation gain from 1400 m to 2400 m! I got a little headachy from the elevation change, but nothing too bad! I did have to push myself although not as much as at Oze, ha. So lucky that I had great weather too!