Livin' the McDream: Mt Iwaki & Hirosaki Fall Festival

This Saturday's exploration took us to Mt. Iwaki and its Tsugaru Iwaki Skyline. I think this was our third or forth trip to Mt. Iwaki with the hopes of driving and hiking to the summit. The last couple of times we had to abort our plans due to heavy cloud cover on the mountain, today there were a few clouds, but it was looking like it'd be worth a shot. And let's face it, our time here is getting short when next year's deployment cuts out 7 months, so we've got to take advantage even when the conditions aren't perfect!

Mt. Iwaki is near Hirosaki and using toll roads it takes about 2 hours to Hirosaki; we took a little more scenic route through the apple orchards and it took about 3 hours to get all the way to the Skyline Road (130 km = 80 mi).

GPS coordinates: 40.641561, 140.261645

Aomori Prefecture (prefecture = state) is FAMOUS for its apples. The Fuji apple was even invented here, betcha didn't know that, or did you?? Aomori produces over half of all the apples grown in Japan. Usually that's about 500,000 tons per year, from about 53,000 acres of farm land.

That's a lot of apples, I did some quick math...

500,000 tons = 1 Billion pounds

The average apple weighs a third of a pound, so that's approximately 3 BILLION APPLES per year!

Out of curiosity I also googled how many apples are produced by the USA's largest apple producing state, Washington. About 10-12 billion apples annually, pretty impressive, although Aomori Prefecture is a "little" smaller...only slightly larger than Delaware.

Mt. Iwaki

Some apples still have their protective bags that are put on
when they're still teeny tiny.

I was trying to figure out the purpose of individually bagging apples while they are growing and I came across an article that answered all of my questions! So...why are the apples bagged and what are those white sheets on the ground under the trees??

Perfect apples take a lot of time and the Japanese farmers touch each apple about 10-12 times from the time it's a blossom to when it is harvested. When the apples are less than 1" in diameter farmers are on ladders putting two-layered bags on each apple. The outer layer is opaque and shields the apples from all sunlight and also keeps out bugs. The wax layer's color affects the color genes of the apple and helps determine what color the apple will become. In the fall the outer bag is removed from the currently all white apples. The wax layer stays on for several more days. Once the wax bags are removed, the ground is covered with reflective mats and all the excess leaves are trimmed from the trees so the apples get as much sunlight as possible. The sunlight changes their white skin to the colors we'd normally associate with apples. The apples are hand-turned (and held in place with rubber bands) every few weeks to make sure the color develops uniformly.

(Source: http://magazine.uc.edu/issues/0408/japanese_apples.html)

My mind is blown. The apples start out white. I had no idea, my guess was the mats helped keep the air a little warmer to prevent frost at night...wrong. I'm still imagining how many times up and down the ladders the farmers do each year...and let me say, not many of them looked very young.

Apple orchards behind us, we drove around Mt. Iwaki and to the windy road that would take us toward the top. The Tsugaru Iwaki Skyline road is 9.8 km of switchbacks, 69 of them to be exact. Not a good road for anyone that gets carsick. The curves don't stop until the top. Once at the upper level parking lot there are a couple options to get to the peak, there's a hiking trail and a ski lift. The lift, as we discovered today, shuts down for the season before the road. Hiking was our only option. The top of the mountain was in a cloud, white and snowy looking. We'd soon find out it wasn't actually snow...a really, really thick icy frost that left every branch white and the ground white when it fell from the branches. The weather's been warm enough that the frost had also melted and refroze making the trail icy too. As we made our way up it got slicker and slicker, not so bad going up, but we were not looking forward to the tedious trek back down. Not exactly sure how close to the top we got, but the peak was still in a cloud and the ice was not getting any easier to ascend on...we had to turn back before reaching our goal. We hiked/slipped/skated back down. In total we hiked up for about 45 minutes, probably were 20ish minutes from the top, and it took us 30 to go back down. Slightly disappointed that we didn't reach the summit, but definitely not a failure, the views that we did see were awesome and the frost covered branches were spectacular. Beautiful.

I'm not sure on the open/closing dates for the Skyline road, but I'm sure it can't be open much longer this year. There is a toll of ¥1800 per car to drive the road and I think the lift is ¥820/person round trip, when it's open.
More info can be found here: http://www.iwaki-skyline.jp/index.html

View from the parking lot.

You can barely see where the trail runs up the mountain
to the left of the ski lift.

Of course as soon as we'd descended to the parking lot
the clouds shifted and the peak came into view.

Each switchback is numbered.

Didn't get to a vantage point to get a good picture
of the road from above.

Tsugaru Iwaki Skyline road, visible on the left side
of Mt. Iwaki if you look closely.

The Skyline road is pretty cool on the map too.

Since we cut our hiking a little short we, let's be honest, I, decided that we should check out Hirosaki's Autumn festival. I went to the festival last year and thought it was pretty underwhelming, but the colors of the trees in the park were amazing, enough that I didn't mind visiting again. We stopped at a farmers' market along the way to pick up some gigantic, yummy apples.

Don't have this flavor in the USA.

Did I mention the apples are almost the
size of my head??

"She drunk, dreaming in the stream,
always be happy with liqueur.
And after went to sleep."

Hirosaki Castle Chrysanthemum and Fall Foliage Festival is an annual event that begins in October and ends in November, the dates vary by year. We didn't go though the botanical garden where the chrysanthemum display competition takes place, but we did walk around the rest of the park and near the castle. There are about 1,000 maple trees and 2,600 cherry trees.