Posts Tagged ‘hiking’

Chanting down the mountain

This is a short video (sorry about the bad quality) I took during a climb of Ontake-san 御嶽山 on September 21st.  Ontake-san is one of the holiest mountains in Japan, having been opened for religious practice around the 16th century.

Even now worshipers from all over Japan come to climb the mountain and pray at its many shrines.  These practioners are part of the Shingon sect (真言宗) of Buddhism, which is associated mainly with Mt. Koya.

Shingon practicioners view Ontake-san as their spiritual mother, which they symbolize through the red cords they wear at their hips to represent an umbilical cord.

This group had come from a temple in Ibaraki prefecture.

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Contributor Bio: I am a doctoral student of environmental anthropology currently living and conducting research in a mountain village in Nagano. In my research I explore modernity as it is expressed in a rural mountain community. Specifically I look at national management structures, as well as social discourses, related to forests and probe the impacts these have on local human communities. I have lived and worked in Japan for 5 years. My interests also include Buddhism, literature, music, and mountaineering. Read more at my personal blog: In the Pines.
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The World’s Most Dangerous Hiking Trail

There are few mountain tourist trails as dangerous as the above pictured route on Mt. Hua in China’s Shaanxi Province. Not only does much of the trail consist of narrow footpaths and extremely steep staircases, but there are also a few sections where hikers must scale across cliffs on a rusty chain and some foot-sized holes chiseled in the rock. There’s even a place where one must descend a 20 meter chain to reach the continuation of the trail!

Here’s a video of a Japanese TV show visiting the trail:

The video report claims that sometimes about 100 climbers a year fall to their deaths on the trail. Luckily, people who don’t want to risk death can take a far safer trail on the other side of the mountain!

For more information on Mt. Hua, check out this post at BestHike and this photo gallery at Damn Cool Pics [the source of the pics in this post].