It was 5am on Sunday, 11th of August, 2024. The Rausu Campground was still quiet, campers sleeping in, the subdued sounds of a cool summer buzzing in the trees. Timbah had, like always, slept out under the stars in the parking lot, and was just rousing when I climbed out of the van. Chris had started the night outside, but was now snoozing in the front seat of Mick’s van.
We’d had word from Ben last night that he had finally made it to New Chitose Airport in southwest Hokkaido. “I’ll start my way over east tonight,” he messaged.
Before going to bed last night, we messaged him to meet us at the take-out near Utoro, so we could drop the van there and get the shuttle sorted. using his car to return to the put-in. We didn’t get a response, so hoped he got the message.
After everyone woke up, we all jumped in the vans and headed in different directions. Chris and Mick still had to pack their kayaks, so they headed straight to the put-in at Seseki Onsen (we’d got permission to put in there yesterday). We headed to the spot we planned to take out at the end of the trip – the beach about 1.5km northeast of Utoro central.
It was a magical drive over Shiretoko Pass (740m). We ascended through the murky fog and near the top of the pass broke through to glorious sunshine.
On the descent down to the Utoro side, we once again dropped below the cloud cover. Ben was right where he needed to be, parked in a small gravel lot next to the beach. It took me a few loud knocks on his car window to wake him up.
“I rolled in at around 3am,” he mumbled.
A legendary effort on his part, having travelled from Perth, Australia, non-stop, no doubt with very little sleep, after a tough 10-day work shift in the desert.
We headed straight to the nearest convenience store to grab some breakfast.
Ben’s car was completely out of fuel, running on fumes. To fill the car in order to get back over to the put-in, we’d need to wait an hour till the gas stations opened in the sleepy tourist town of Utoro. This gave us plenty of time to catch up as we ate some breakfast outside the Utoro michi-no-eki road stop. Ben had left Hokkaido about a year ago, so we had plenty to catch up on. As a newly minted rope-access technician, Ben already had some stories to tell.
8:30am rolled around. Time to fill up with fuel and head back over the pass. We scribbled a note to leave on our van dashboard, informing any concerned locals or michi-no-eki employees that we’d be back to collect the van in a week. 90 minutes later, we were at the put-in, ready to get the boats prepped for launch.
Chris and Mick were still sorting their gear out. A good old-fashioned gear-explosion.
The weather forecast for today was for 15km/h headwinds out of the north-east, gusting to about 35km/h. We figured if we could bash out 10km or so for the afternoon, hopefully making it to a patch of beach just before Pekin-no-hana Cape, that would be a good inning for the day.
Haidee, Timbah and I had packed our boats last night, but Ben still had to sort out his gear and boat. He was going to be paddling one of Mick’s boats – a 15ft Perception Expression sea kayak. Ben would be paddling a new boat, in a fairly challenging sea state, fully loaded, after not paddling on the sea for a year. I hoped we wouldn’t have to pull him out of the water too many times today.
Ben was just off the plane from Australia, so was looking suitably civilized with his suitcase on the shore.
Tourists came and went from Seseki Onsen just 50m to the east of us.
It was just before noon when we were all ready to go, after some last-minute rearranging of gear.
After lunch, we all stood around for a powwow and last-minute arrangements before getting on the water. We talked about expectations of the trip in general, plus expectations for the first afternoon of paddling.
“How many spare paddles have we got?” asked Haidee.
“Probably just one or two for the group will be fine?” suggested Chris.
“I don’t want to be without one, because who knows when I might be by myself and in need of one” said Haidee firmly, as she strapped one to her boat.
“Don’t worry,” said Mick sincerely. Locking eyes with Haidee he said reassuringly, “I’ll never leave your side!”
“Well, let’s all keep together within yelling distance at the most,” suggested Haidee.
The group was in agreement. We would all be paddling loaded boats for the first time in a long while, so there was consensus that we needed to stay as a group just in case anyone needed assistance.
With formalities out of the way, we all climbed into our boats and launched off the stony beach. Small waves were breaking onto the beach, and the windchop further out was lively with some small whitecaps here and there, but manageable.
At least that’s what I had thought.
Chris and Mick launched first, and in what felt like only a few minutes, they were almost dots on the horizon.
“Mick said he wouldn’t leave me!” laughed Haidee.
We didn’t catch up to Chris and Mick until 1.5km later, until they found some shelter from the wind and chop at the entrance of Aidomari Port. We continued a little further to some better shelter just behind some reefs east of the port so that we could have another powwow check-in with everyone.
Top of mind for me was to understand why Chris and Mick had taken off from the group, after we’d talked about staying together for a bit.
“It’s feeling gnarly,” admitted Mick. “Like I said before, while I’ve done a lot of guiding, all my paddling has been on flat water with complete beginners, and a lot of it on lakes. The open coast is keeping me on my toes and is definitely out of my comfort zone.”
A little sheepishly, Chris added, “this boat I’m in feels more stable going fast.”
Haidee and I learned about this response to nerves on the water at one of our sea kayak training sessions in the UK. We’d seen it occasionally with others we paddle with on the weekends, but this was feeling a bit more consequential. Shiretoko is a remote place, and we felt like keeping at least a little bit closer together would be a better risk management strategy.
We all reiterated our desire to keep in reasonable range of each other and carried on.
The northeastlies were picking up, as was the chop.
The group stayed together a little better on this second leg of paddling. Chris and Mick soon pulled ahead, however. They cut across bays, favouring the bigger but more predictable conditions further out from shore.
From our experience, we’ve generally found that it’s usually better to stick slightly closer to shore, to take advantage of lulls in the chop and wind in the lee of points along the coast. It’s a tricky calculus, however, as being closer to shore means more likelihood of encountering reflective chop and shoals that need to be dodged – not ideal when you’re feeling out of your comfort zone.
We found respite from the wind and chop behind Tokkari Cape, and regrouped.
Spirits were high despite (or perhaps because of?) the lively conditions.
“This scenery is blowing me away,” said Ben, wide-eyed. “Are you guys seeing this?!”
I had to admit that the scenery was of somewhat secondary interest for me this time around. Haidee and I had paddled this section of coast to Moereushi Bay with Saoka a couple of seasons ago as a day trip. That day, we had much more relaxed sea conditions. Today, I was more focused on the excitement of the lively conditions, and to some degree the weight of my role as a manager of the group.
I pulled myself out of the self-reflection and replied to Ben. “This is about as unimpressive as the scenery gets, apparently,” I replied. “It only gets better from here!”
Speaking of Ben, he had been the original wild-card for this trip. We hadn’t paddled with him for a while, and certainly not in lumpy conditions. We figured if there was anyone we’d be pulling out of the water, it might be him. But he was crushing it. I was impressed with how comfortable and relaxed he looked in his boat.
The original plan for today was to push on past Moereushi Bay and camp at some old banya (fishing hut) ruins just shy of Pekin-no-hana Cape. In the back of my mind, however, I remembered that when we were at Moereushi Bay a couple of seasons ago on the daytrip, I had thought it would be an epic bay to camp in. It’s a deep bay, with untouched native forest stretching beyond the bay deep into the Shrietoko interior. A stream runs into the sea.
Then Timbah chimed in.
“Why don’t we camp here?” he suggested.
It wasn’t a bad idea. Just as we arrived in Moereushi Bay, a light rain started to fall. The wind wasn’t getting any gentler out on the exposed coast either.
It was an unplanned, but easy decision.
In the murk of a blustery late afternoon, everyone got busy setting up camp.
First to go up was the epic group tarp, brought on the trip by the team’s resident tarp-master, Mick. He had borrowed it from the Daisetsuzan Nature School, where he does some instructing. It’s a ginormous Montbell tarp. In the right hands, it makes for a perfect sun and rain shelter, mostly impervious to wind.
For a gloomy, showery sort of late afternoon, it was a godsend.
Mick might have been out of his comfort zone on the messy sea conditions today, but that was not affecting his tarpology prowess on land.
It was interesting to see what everyone had brought for dinner.
Ben’s dinner was predictably the most processed, consisting primarily of instant noodles. This was only predictable because he drove over six hours, straight from the airport, to get out east in time to start the trip. This had precluded time spent refining his food choices, as he made do with whatever he could find along the way out east.
Mick and Chris had opted to go in together on food, and tonight was a New Zealand made freeze-dry meal with some extra bits and pieces thrown in, all boiled up on Grisha’s MSR Windburner stove (borrowed from Grisha last minute).
Timbah’s dinner was, as always, impressively cook-from-scratch, with all-fresh ingredients. The man is a camp cooking wizard.
Haidee and I were happy to finally get into our home-made dehydrated meals. It was a random, blind selection from our massive food bag. Mine was a chilli-con-carne, and Haidee’s meal ended up being a risotto. We added some slices of parmesan, plus some splashes of hot sauce to spice it up.
Over dinner, the group chatted about plans for tomorrow. Originally, I’d been keen to get around Cape Shiretoko tomorrow. But we’d stopped slightly earlier than planned today, so in the end we decided that we’d just paddle under 10km to Nihon-daki (Two Waterfalls), and see how conditions were shaping up.
As for a weather forecast, Chris beat me to it.
“The Garmin inReach forecast is saying it’s going to be calm and fine tomorrow,” he reported.
That was good news, because the most recent forecast I’d seen when we set off in the morning called for a blustery southeast wind – a tailwind – building into the day. A southeasterly tailwind would be a nice change from the tough on-the-nose headwind from today, but I was quietly concerned about what this might mean for the sea state, and particularly what this might mean for Mick.
While a following sea can be fun (up to a point) if you’re used to it, it can be harrowing if you’re not used to waves from behind pushing you around. The apparent promise of not too much of that was a good thing.
Timbah had previously argued for a 3:30am start, to avoid any complications with the wind – usually, the wind is most calm at sunrise. This would have required a 2:00am wake-up.
The suggestion of a 2am wake-up was not widely popular though. Spurred on by what seemed to be a favourable forecast and short distance tomorrow, the group settled on a 4:30am wake-up, relatively confident that we’d be able to smash out the less than 10km quickly in good conditions. We were all tired from the hustle and bustle of preparations for the trip, after all. Surely it was time to take it easy?
If any of us knew what was waiting for us the next day, however, we wouldn’t have ignored Timbah’s sixth sense.
8 thoughts on “Shiretoko Circumnavigation Day 1 – Seseki Onsen to Moereushi”
I am also enjoying the story! Reading this while camping on the breakwater at Shari, looking back towards Shiretoko, after my own adventure round the headland.
We’re eagerly awaiting for your story of your trip around the peninsula too!
So rad!! This is an awesome adventure.
Definitely one of the best (if not THE best) I’ve done here in Japan. Remote, dynamic, lots of uncertainty!
Whoah…..the pix of those waves!!! hairy…
They were coming from the front of us, so all very manageable. A bit tough paddling into the wind though!
I am loving this saga!!
Thank Gregory! I’m enjoying reflecting on the trip through writing these blog posts.