Fact-finding mission into 尾瀬ヶ原 (Ozegahara) National Park

Ozegahara national park is literally on our doorstep, and we have been meaning to take a tramp up there for a while, but as is often the case it has taken us a good while to get round to it. On the way over (it is about 50 minutes drive from the house) we found a most beautiful spot on the river (which for the life of me I can not find the name of) that we absolutely have to come back to for a swim day. This is that spot:

At Ozegahara itself there is a short walk from the car park and then a long downhill stretch through the forest until you get to where the unique area of whatever is called (wetlands, marshland??) starts. Couple of snaps of the forest area below.

The area that I suppose constitutes the main attraction of the national park is amazing. Even on a day like today when it was mainly raining, it was just spectacular. At one point the mountain of Shibutsu tried to come out to play, revealing maybe 25% of itself, which was enough for me to decide to come back again and attempt to get up it.

Here are a few pictures of me and Steve trudging through the interesting flora. Don't forget to click on them to get the full enlarged benefit.

The rain really picked up on the way back, and by the time we were nearby done the path up had turned into quite a nice waterfall!!

Interestingly, despite all the bear warning signs we didn't see any bears while up here, but we did encounter one on the way home. It was on the road in front of us and we thought we had a most exciting 2 minute video of it slowly ambling up the hillside from about 10 yards away, but when we got back to base what we actually had was a 3 second video of the dashboard followed by 2 minutes of fuck all.

For anyone interested in the boring technical details of the hike itself, here is a link to the track on OutdoorActive:

https://www.outdooractive.com/en/track/ozegahara-national-park-area-on-august-17-2022/249727132/?share=%7Eztm4ug3e%244ossxezq