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About YLT Club

professional Hiker / Columbia athlete & Ambassador

Representative of YLT Club

Masafumi Saito

The NPO Yamagata Long Trail was established with my friends in 2012, when I took over the back from the late Japanese long trail writer and backpacker Noriyoshi Kato , and turned into a professional hiker from a company employee. was. At that time, there was no concept of a trail that would pass mainly through national and national parks on Japanese trails, and Mr. Noriyoshi Kato said, "If you want to make a trail in Yamagata, it would be nice if you could use a national or national park as a route." In order to realize it, we decided to envision a trail centered on the Kura Kingdom fixed park. It was an activity that started to create a walking field in Japan, but at that time, the word "trail" was unknown even to a few lovers.

In addition, there were many institutional problems and cultural differences in creating a route learned from the American trail in Japan in Japan. Even though the word “trail” was not in widespread use, it was extremely difficult to reach out to the government.

We chose not to create a new route that damages nature but to create a new route, but to proceed with the trail concept with a route that consists of existing forest roads, mountain trails, promenades, etc. It was. What kind of route do we have in Japan? I actually went into the field to find out how to make a trail in Japan that is close to the shape of the United States, and walked in search of various ways. Since 2017, we have been using Yamagata Prefecture's 100 Yamagata subsidies, so as of April 2020, we will install YLT markers on about 30% of the routes in the Kurama Kingdom Park. Work is progressing to. This year, we are planning an activity to set up a marker in a national park using a grant from Yamagata 100 Mountains. We would appreciate your support and cooperation.

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