Sounkyo Gorge

I always try to incoporate some national parks into my travels to get away from the busy and crowded cities and just enjoy a little bit of hiking. Hence i boarded the Okhotsk Express train to Kamikawa and then a local bus to Sounkyo, a lovely little Onsen town in a beautiful gorge. I had to get a ticket for the local bus at the trainstation and somehow the friendly man behind the counter already knew i was going there. I gues it's the main attracton of the area. ;-) Today's goal was to climb Mt. Kurodake, a 1980 meter high mountaintop. A cablecar and chairlift would bring me up to 1500 meters from where i would climb the remaining 400 meters to the top on a well marked trail. At least that was the plan. Since it was the end of the skiing season and the summer season hadn't officialy started, the chairlift was out of commission due to maintenance. This meant i would have to climb 200 meters extra. I was in a good spirit and decided to give it a go anyway. Yeah right. From the end of the ropeway there was quite a thick layer of snow still remaining and it was really slushy due to the high temperatures of the last couple of days. It took me over an hour to just get to the top station of the chairlift and from that point the climb got even steeper and the snow deeper. I tried to climb it but after a couple of minutes getting stuck up onto my knees in the slushy snow i exclameted some words i can't really repeat here and decided to get back down and enjoy the onsen i so rightfully earned. ;-)
Obviously the walk down was a lot easier and within half an hour (after taking of my socks and shoes to let them dry a little bit) i was back down in the town of Sounkyo. I found a nice and small onsen and enjoyed the hot springwater. It's hard to describe the soothing feeling if you have been walking around all day and then to let your body relax like that. :-)
Since the climb took a lot less time than planned i had time to visit Mt. Moiwa in. It has a great view of the city of Sapporo. I stayed there from dawn til darkness and had a delicious crayfish soup while enjoying the view at night. Back in the hotel it was straight to bed and i fell asleep almost instantly.Read more