Soft rime was an art!!!
At the station at the mountain foot on the Hakkoda Ropeway was a brown beech forest that had lost its leaves although the snow was deep. However, around the station at the mountain top, trees turned into soft rime though the altitude difference was 650 meters. The mountain with altitude of 1,320 meters is not very high, but the harsh climate of this place is equivalent to a 3,000-meter mountain in the central part in Japan.
Speaking of Mt. Hakkoda, Japanese people know well about the incident in which 199 soldiers were killed during the army's march in the snow since its incident was made into a movie. At the present time, Mt. Hokkoda has been developed as a ski ground famous for its aspirin snow. But I still felt a little uneasy about visiting in the winter, so I joined in a snowshoe tour organized by the ski ground company. We advanced in the soft-rime forest that extends from the hill to one of the peaks of Mt. Hakkoda. Fog that contained water droplets adheres to trees, freezes and becomes soft rime. The soft-rime trees seen from up close were innovative as contemporary art or fashion, and no one was the same. I admired the expressiveness of nature.
What was interesting for me was that the phenomenon extended to a man-made radio tower and ropeway station, creating a mysterious soft-rime scene. It was the technique of contemporary art that artists sprayed something onto an existing object. Nature itself played the role of the artist here.
One day in February when I visited, the weather changed rapidly from clear skies to blizzards, but it didn't remind me of a distress. But the day before and the day after, the ropeway was canceled due to strong wind. Especially on the next day, the wind of 25m raged on the mountain. Mt. Hokkoda has been developed for tourism, and now they can enjoy soft-rime trees easily. But even so, Mt. Hakkoda was a place with harsh winter.
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When you want to know more → Time of Travel - Through woods in Aomori - From Hakkoda to Towada : Mt. Hakkoda in the winter and Soft rime (Aomori city, Aomori, Japan)
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