A group of 6 teachers decided to climb a mountain. Mount Adatara to be specific. Well, one vice principal, three teachers, and two ALTs.
Mount Adatara is about a hour south of Fukushima City.
We started off out hike with a gondola ride to the start of the trail.
We started our hike at 9 am and it took us about 2 hours to hike to the top.
The first leg of the hike was fairly easy going. We did stop often, so we would not tire ourselves out.
There were quite a few different plants in bloom.
The sky was not clear, so we could not see far, but at least it was not raining.
Here are some developing pine cones.
The lovely view from the top of the mountain.
Zack (a fellow ALT) and I at the top.
We stopped for lunch before we continued on.
The first photo is about a quarter of the way to the volcano and the second is about halfway between Mount Adatara and the volcano.
We are almost to the edge.
And here is the volcano.
From the volcano to the lodge, the trail is marked by these targets. I was told that the targets make the spine of the bull.
We followed the ridge for a while before we had to descend into the first valley. If you look closely, you can see the trail of people and the rock path that we had to navigate.
We climbed up the other side of the valley onto the opposite ridge from Mount Adatara.
The hike was very easy up to this point. The descent into the next valley is where things got tricky.
This picture is very deceiving. It looks the the descent is an easy one, but the brush hides the trail we followed. The trail was maybe 3 feet wide at its widest part. It was extremely wet and steep.
This is the nicest part of the trail through the brush.
The building at the bottom is where we are trying to go. It is a huge lodge, but from here (about halfway down), it looks fairly small.
Here we are emerging through the brush.
We finally made it to the lodge. The left side is where we climbed down from and the ridge is the one opposite Mount Adatara. We reached the lodge at about 1pm.
This marks the end of the difficult part of the hike.
From here, the path was very easy. It took us an hour and a half to reach the bottom.
We had a great time with the hike. It was not the easiest hike I have ever been on, but it was not the hardest, either.