Canyoning in Japan

None of these photos were taken by me.

But... since I have mentioned "Canyoning" a few times maybe, I thought I would share some photos and give a (very) little explanation of what it is as I too had no idea until I started guiding it! I did take a very technical and intensive guiding course, and I am not the lead guide, so its not really as dangerous as it sounds. In fact, for the amount of fun and thrills canyoning offers, it is amazingly safe. We take children as young as nine and seniors as old as... well I didn't really ask, but I am guessing their bone had already begun to get brittle.

Anyway, canyoning is not sawanobori (shower climbing) as I once thought. In fact, in our canyon tour the only "climbing" is up a dirt road for about 100 meters to the start. From there its all down.

The big thrill of canyoning comes from the sliders - imagine sliding down a 20 meter vertical waterfall on your butt with no rope! And the jumping, and the recircs (places where the you get caught in the recirculating white water and just spun around and around and around and around until the water-fall gods have mercy on you or, more likely, one of us pulls you out.

I find the description from the Visit Scotland site to be quite accurate.

Not for the fainthearted, canyoning is a white water ride down gorges and waterfalls. Participants run down wet slabs of rock, jump off blind escarpments, scramble up rocks and abseil (rappel) down drops.

Its not all just thrills though. As a hiker, I am usually looking down into the canyon from a higher vantage point, but when you are looking up out of the canyon, the views aretruly amazing. Just stopping to think about where you are and how most people would never even think it possible.

Since the our canyon in Hakuba is filled with frigid snow-melt, we wear two layers of wet-suit, including gloves, socks, and a hood. I usually drink a lot of water before I head in so that if I ever feel cold I can warm myself up the old fashioned way.

If you take a look at the large version of the photo above you will see me in the gray helmet looking guidely.

Links related to Canyoning

Evergreen Outdoors (Shameless plug for the company I am guiding for... if you decide to join a trip after seeing this post, don't forget to mention it!)
Canyons Minakami (Where I took my training course a few weeks back
Wikipedia: Canyoning
Commission Internationale de Canyon(The school of canyoning that my training was based on)