Well on our way!

It's 5:50 in the morning, and after a bit of fun with Japanese maps we're well on our way up the mountain - yup, the sun rises early here! We start our hike at Station 5 on the Subashiri trail, which seems to be the thing to do (starting at Station 5, I mean). I would actually say that we started at Station 4.5 because the nearest available parking spot was quite a way down the mountain and we got well-warmed-up on our way to Station 5. In this photo, we're giving our poor 1995 Mitsubishi Galant a well-deserved rest on the way up the hill to prevent it from overheating. We could smell the heat coming off all the cars that passed us here - our heater was running full-blast most of the way up. We probably wouldn't have made it to our goal if the car hadn't had low gear (one below D2 for those of you who, like me, wouldn't have a clue) - we were maxing out at about 20kph by the time we parked! Mike did a great job managing the vehicle on this tough climb.