Chogatake is located in Nagano’s Middle Alps in Kamikochi, the same park as the beautiful Karasawa. Roughly translated, Chogatake means “Butterfly Peak” because of the butterfly-shaped snow patches visible in spring. I was itching for another overnight trip and chose this mountain with my group for its great views of the Hotakas and Mt. Yari! Unfortunately, you can’t win ’em all. This hike beat us up in so many ways and we definitely learned a lot from it. Read on to find out what happened!
Hiking up Chogatake
We’d been on the trail for about 15 minutes when we passed people coming down. “Hang in there!” they yelled. “It’s super super super hard! Do your best!” Well that’s encouraging….
About 10 minutes later, I slipped on some mud and fell forward, catching myself on my right arm. Luckily nothing hurt, but it definitely sapped my enthusiasm. I almost turned around but decided to hang in there for another hour.
Cut to an hour later where I hit my second wind and we heard an ominous rumbling in the distance.
“Was that thunder?”
“Yeah, I think it was….”
“Well, hopefully it goes away.”
At this point, Jessica, Jesse, Hunter, and I were about two hours into our hike, and, it seemed, no closer to the top. We were slowly realizing that we had severely underestimated this hike.
This became more apparent when, an hour later, a sign told us we were exactly halfway to Chogatake. It had taken us an agonizing three hours to go three kilometers! But we felt we couldn’t turn around now, so up we went.
And up.
And up.
And up.
Up ladders, past ponds, through mud, leaning heavily on our trekking poles, up and up and up.
By the time we finally cleared the trees, the sure sign we were close, the clouds had rolled over the mountain, the thunder was getting closer, and it was lightly sprinkling. “Just get to the tent field. Just get to the tent field and throw up the tent before it rains. Then you don’t have to move anymore. Tent has to go up before it rains. Don’t rain. Please.”
With Hunter running ahead to the hut to pay our fees, and Jesse running up to the summit (which was maybe 50 feet up), Jessica and I continued to the hut with single-minded determination.
15 minutes later we were in the tent field, throwing up our tent as fast as we could. Jesse grabbed his rain cover for his backpack and pulled out a poncho for Jessica, but I was too tired and too convinced it wouldn’t rain. I shoved my backpack and Hunter’s under our rainfly to protect them while we turned to help with the second tent.
The Rain
We had just started on their tent when the rain came. It came down sharply, slamming into us and bringing with it huge gusts of wind that threatened to rip the sturdy fabric from our hands. Within seconds Jesse and Jessica’s tent was soaked through and unusable. And still we fumbled with it. “JESSE” I yelled, struggling to be heard, “JESSE THE RAINFLY! WHERE IS THE RAINFLY?!” Hunter was fiddling with the poles, hands shaking, my hands were shaking too as I tried to find rocks to hold the tent down. Eventually I just looked at Jessica, shaking my head. “GET TO THE HUT!” I screamed, as another gale buffeted us. Her and Jesse grabbed their backpacks, Hunter grabbed the poles, and I scooped up the soaking fabric and we all hobbled to the hut.
Chogatake Hutte
We threw open the back door to the hut and jumped inside onto the concrete floor, breathing heavily and dropping the soaking tent. Two women staying there who were walking nearby jumped and looked at us, eyes wide.
「やばい！大丈夫ですか？」 (Oh no! Are you ok?) they asked.
「大丈夫です。」 (We’re fine.) replied Jessica. Part of me couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Do we LOOK OK?!
Shoes sloshing with every step, I squished over to the counter. The young woman behind it looked shocked as she took in our drenched figures.
“We didn’t get the tent up.”
“Well…. we have a policy of not accepting same-day reservations for the hut because of Covid-19… You could sit over there for a few hours and see if it stops raining?”
I just looked over to where Jessica was fumbling with the tent, Hunter standing next to me very still, in shorts and a t-shirt, trying not to shiver, Jesse squeezing water out of his clothes.
“We can’t use the tent. It is soaked through. Can you please make an exception?” She walked into the back to confer with some people before coming back out. She grabbed the calculator.
We do have a room, but there’ll be an extra charge –”
“That’s ok, how much will it be?”
“Ummmmm….” Click clack click clack. “It’ll be ￥12000. You can pay with cash or we can set up a furikomi.” Everyone immediately grabbed their wallets, and after she took off 2000 since we just paid for the tents, we were all set for a night in the hut.
The rest of the night consisted of apologizing again and again for leaving pools of water with every footstep, ‘drying off’ with damp clothes, eating tons of rice and miso soup, and watching everyone dash outside to get beautiful views of the sunset after the rain passed. Our shoes were soaked through, so we had to pass on that. We were feeling much better by bedtime though! Dry and in our own room, we laughed and cried together over the disaster that was the day before trying to get some sleep.
What we learned from day 1
- Don’t try to out-hike a storm. It ain’t gonna happen.
- Leave the raincoat at home during summer, they’re too heavy and bulky. Take a poncho instead and clip it to the outside so it’s easy to grab.
- If we had literally waited like 15 minutes, we would’ve been inside the hut when it rained instead of getting hypothermia in the tent field. Sometimes it’s better to wait and see then to rush into a potentially bad situation.
- Jessica and I are definitely not in shape enough to hike up a mountain with an absurdly heavy backpack on. Gotta work out more!
- Going off of that, it might be better to just plan on staying in the hut for the longer, more strenuous mountains.
I love that top photo right next to the hut. It looks so ominous and spooky 🙂
[…] is part two of my first attempt at Chogatake! If you missed part 1, click here to read it […]