!TRAVEL NOTESGETTING THEREDirect flights from London to Tokyo cost from around pounds 1,000 low-season return with British Airways (0345 222111)and from around pounds 1,200 over the summer. His father had built the place 72 years ago when the logs had to be carried up from the valley below. Carefully crafted in natural wood, today the hut can accommodate 350 people and is partially lit by electricity from solar panels and windmills.We plopped down in the comfortable couch next to Imeda-san The other hikers in the room looked equally content. It was hard to imagine them back in their workaday worlds crammed into a shinkansen (bullet train) hurtling at warp speed to and from their offices. For them, these mountains offered a reprieve from the onslaught of daily life.

For us, they were a fascinating microcosm of a complex culture.”If only all mountain experiences were this gruelling,” said Pat as he opened a can of beer and watched the sun set over the alps through the large picture window. The hut owner, Hideo Imeda sat contentedly in a hand hewn wooden chair basking in the warmth of a wood burning stove. Classical music filled the room with melody and soothed our wind blown spirits. Back home in Canada, thousands of Japanese tourists on bus tours rattle through the extensive shopping malls of Banff National Park, like steel balls in a pachinko game. By preserving parts of their own backyard, the Japanese can rely on the eagerness of other countries (such as Canada) to forfeit their wilderness values in return for perceived economic gain.Thinking it would be hard to surpass the ambience of Kitahotaka, we continued on to Okuhotake Sanso, surrounded by the tight cluster of craggy peaks of Hotaka-dake, Karasawa-dake, Okuhodaka-dake and Machodaka-dake The icy wind nearly blew us inside.

The rock was solid, gritty and offered good protection.We were now within a day’s walk of Kamikochi, a popular tourist centre down in the Azusa Valley. It would be heartening to see that this mecca for the more than 8m annual visitors to the Chubu Sangaku National Park had thus far resisted development beyond the basic needs. It was hard to keep up with his youthful gait as we proceeded to the base of the route. With afternoon clouds already swamping the sky and a dismal forecast for the morrow, we opted for a shorter route instead of the multi-pitch one that had been planned for the next day. Married with three children, he had nonetheless quit his job at a paint company two-and-a-half years previously to become a full-time guide Now he spends 250 days a year in the mountains.

We were met there by three climbers, two of whom work for Yama-kei, Japan’s premier outdoor publisher. Editor Hitadaki Miyazaki and freelance photographer Osamu Uchida had brought a climber by the name of Nishimura Toyakazu, or “Nishi”, with the hope of photographing him, Adi and Pat on a technical rock climb on nearby Takidani.Fifty-year-old Nishi, sporting torn Lycra tights and glacier glasses, was a climbing machine with an enviable heart rate of just 30. It was a small and intimate place with space for 50 people (or 200 at a pinch), our idea of what a mountain hunt should be like But it had class as well. Fresh flowers in tiny vases adorned the tables in the cramped dining room, while paintings made by the manager’s father graced the walls.Schubert’s Trout Quintet serenaded us as we ate a beautifully prepared supper and chatted with the hut’s other dozen occupants. As we edged closer the route became evident and we carefully climbed in an exhilarating dance with gravity, clinging to chains and steel ladders. At the top, perched on the edge of a drop-off like an eagle’s nest, was the Kitahotaka Sanso.At 3,100m, this is the highest hut in Japan, excluding those on Mt Fuji. The peaks sharpened into knife-edge ridges that forced the trail and us on to a precarious route along the very spine.

The final obstacle of Mt Kitahotaka (3,106m) towered above us in a daunting steep rock wall. Its popularity among mountaineers has earned it the nickname “the Ginza Traverse”, after the popular shopping district in central Tokyo. The Yari-dake Sanso, a 70-year-old sprawling wooden structure, was decidedly medieval. While its location was stupendous, perched high on top of a col below the sharp spear of 3,180m Mt Yarigatake, its interior – built on several levels connected by dark stairways – was gloomy, just like the weather. For the rest of the day we sat around a kerosene heater, alternately watching the occasional hiker being blown in through the door like a brittle autumn leaf and the huge bodies of blubber being shoved around on television in the ongoing national sumo wrestling championship.The trail south of Yari to Kitahotaka Sanso was by far the most technical and exciting part of the whole alps traverse. Over the days to follow, as this frustrating weather pattern continued, his body would acclimatise to the altitude but never the cold.