Author: valerauko

Kai-koma

Sadly this year the southern Japanese Alps are very difficult to access. All the mountain roads are closed, the buses aren’t running and some municipalities outright announced they don’t accept any climbing notices. So basically you either have to walk in all the way from one of the still accessible mountain passes, or go for the mountains “at the edges.” Since I wasn’t in the mood for a 30km approach just now, I decided to take the latter choice and climb Mt Kai-koma.


Omote-Ginza and Gendarme

Much rest wasn’t planned. Maybe eat something nice, drink a beer and enjoy a hot spring and get some sleep in a bed for a change. More important was doing my laundry and refilling water. The previous four days in the Ushiro-Tateyama range were fun, and I was up for more.


Back of Tateyama

I was confused why the Ushiro-Tateyama mountain range (from Jiigatake to Mt Shirouma) is called what it is. It means “rear Tateyama” which is weird from my point of view: isn’t it in front of Tateyama? The name of course would come from the other (Toyama) side, but it still feels weird.

A while back I walked into a bookshop and I spotted a mountain magazine focusing on the so-called kiretto of the country. These are gaps in the mountain range, often very “deep” cols with pretty tough terrain. This magazine named three as the “big three” of Japan: the Hachimine col between Mt Kashima-yari and Mt Goryuu, the Kaerazu col between Mt Karamatsu and Mt Shirouma, and the “great” dai-kiretto between Mt Hotaka and Mt Yari.


Going green

There is kind of a status to having your GitHub contributions chart covered in green. For those unfamiliar, it’s a calendar-like chart that shows how active you are on GitHub any given day. It’s assumed that the greener the better. I’m not so sure anymore.

From the start of May to the end of July, I tried filling it up. Do something every day. My conclusion is that this is a typical case of Goodhart’s law. Basically as soon as a certain metric (in this case turning that chart green) becomes a goal in itself, it ceases to be a meaningful metric anymore.


Tanigawa megint

Tavaly télen egyszer már nekifutottam a Tanigawának, és gond nélkül meg is másztam a hóban – épp csak az előcsúcsot, nem a főcsúcsot. Ráadásul nem is a lábától másztam akkor, hanem a gerincnél lévő sípályáig felvonóval mentem. Ideje volt hát most bepótolni a hiányosságokat!


The Eagle Has Landed

Alas this isn’t about seeing Avatar live, though I’d definitely love that too (not with the virus though, not anytime soon). This is, on the other hand about climbing three of the Hundred Famous Japanese Mountains in the Northern Alps – and one of them is called Washiba-dake, which would be “wings of the eagle.”


Kirigamine és Tateshina

Kirigamine és Tateshina két “kisebb” hegy a Yatsugatake környékén (aminek a főcsúcsa az Akadake). Odajutni Tokióból három-négy óra, bár megmászni egyiket se telik túl sok időbe. Ezért kitaláltam, hogy ha már úgyis “ráérek” így a vírus alatt, akár rá is szánhatok egy hétvégét erre. Szerencsére találtam egy kempinget, ahol (pár horkoló részeg és néhány szúnyog kivételével) nyugodtan és olcsón tudtam éjszakázni. Plusz autóval voltam, úgyhogy nem számított, ha kicsit nehéz a sátor.


Iced to Electron

I got really frustrated by GitKraken. I’ve been using it for years now both for work and for hobby projects without much to complain about really. Then again I’m not a heavy git user: mostly I just commit and push, only occasionally squashing or cherry picking. I don’t even remember when was the last time I needed a rebase, but it wasn’t yesterday.

However recently GitKraken started having these weird problems with my work repositories. These can get pretty big (by my standards) with tons of branches getting pushed to in parallel (and in the early days some very large blobs got checked in too). Because the branches move really quick it’s important that I can keep my own up to date by merging the head branch back.


雲取る雲取

コロナ禍で県またいで移動しないように要請されてるし、都内の山と言えば雲取山。奥多摩からアクセスもそこそこ充実してて朝一から行けるところなので6-7時間ぐらいの山行なら完璧。人気があるから登山道が整備されてて危ないところはない。日帰りなら鴨沢からの最短ルートが一般的だけど、長距離でもいいならいっそ奥多摩駅から石尾根をずっと歩く(走る)手もある。春早速も行ったが、夏になってから更に2回も行った。


武尊山其の弐

1月の頭にすでに一回武尊山行ったことあるが、その時は雪山登山の予定が吹雪に阻止された。コロナで自宅待機するのも飽きて車借りてもう一回挑戦しに行ってきた。結果から発表すると、今回は無事山頂に立てた。