Hiking with Cacia on Yatsugatake (Patreon)

When Cacia Zoo visited me in October she mainly wanted to do two things - hike and go to onsen.  It immediately made me think of this one spot about an hour drive from my house that I had been to just once, and kind of stumbled on randomly on a hike - a small onsen up in the mountains that can only be hiked into, where they have an outdoor natural hot spring bath built along a river.  It is the closest thing I could think of in Japan to an American style of hot spring I was used to in the US - very hippy dippy place where anything (respectfully) goes. 

We met up with my friend Megumi, an avid hiker, who had always wanted to check out this hike and onsen, and we set off up the mountain.  I will have a post of stuff we shot at the onsen (we lucked out in that no one else was there the whole time - fun!) later, but along the hike up the mountain, Cacia and I were inspired by the misty scenery of these planted forests (most old growth forest in Japan is long gone and so many mountains forests have this very strange and orderly appearance of similar sized tees of the same species planted almost in neat rows. Its quite artificial as an ecosystem, but an interesting setting for photos), and I asked Megumi if she wouldn't mind waiting around for us to do a quick shoot.  She was amiable and agreed (and it was probably amusing to her to watch us - this sort of thing never happens around here!) and we walked off the trail a bit for a quick bit (very quick - we felt bad making Megumi sit around the trail's edge waiting for us to finish being weirdos!) of shooting.

$25 Archive Patrons can find this full set of 23 high-res images in the Archive folder they have access to (along with many many GBs of my past work over the last 14 years from all other posts).