The Caveman bags one of the💯Hundred Famous Mountains😙. Odarumi Pass, Mt. Kokushi, Mt. Kinpu, etc.

 

Hey there, cavedwellers!

I had the chance to hit a few nice mountains the other day.  Thanks to a case of anticipatory insomnia, I got up super-early and was able to hike about twice as many as I'd planned.  

I had something to do in Tokyo on Saturday night.  Since I wasn't committed until dinnertime, I thought it would be a good chance to bag a few peaks on the way.  There are a lot of mountains between here and there but I decided to retrace some of my footsteps from a past camping trip in order to bag just the one peak that got away.  On that past trip, I hiked from Mizugaki to Kobushigatake on a 3-day trip.  On the way I skipped Mt. Okusenjo.  So I decided to go to the middle of that last hike and hike up to Okusenjo before heading on to Tokyo.  

This is an animation of that first camping trip, by the way.  I highly recommend mimicking my plan.  It was awesome.  The Caveman would not give you bad advice.   

As I mentioned before, I got up too early.  I ended up finishing my planned hike around 9:00 am.  Even though I still had 3 more hours to drive to Tokyo, dinner was a long way off.  I decided to head back on the other side of the trail up to Mt. Kinpu.  That is a great mountain.  It's one of the 100 Famous Mountains and is really prominent.  You can see it really well from places like Koshu and Kofu across the fruited plain of Yamanashi's grape/peach country.

I'm sorry.  This post is way too personal.  I want this blog to draw your attention to the mountains.  They are more interesting than I am.

Without further ado, here are the deets and some pics.

Location:  

Around Kawakami Village, Nagano and Yamanashi City, Yamanashi 

Starting and stopping point:

Odarumi Pass 大弛峠

Peaks bagged: 

Mt. Maekokushigatake ~ Kitaokusenjo ~ Okusenjo ~ Kokushigatake ~ Kuro ~ Asahidake ~ Kinpu

(First-time) peaks 

#890

100 Famous mountain peaks

Kinpu (Honorable mention for Mt. Kokushi as one of Yamanashi's 100 Famous peaks.)

Getting there/getting around: 

I drove.  That drive is another in a long list of experiences I am glad to say that I have but that I wouldn't do again if I knew then what I know now.  There is a forestry road that goes over the pass.  The north side of it, from Kawakami Village in Nagano, is not paved.  That's the side I drove up in my little k-car.  I wouldn't do that again.  The southern side, through Yamanashi, is better.  That side is well-paved.  It's winding and narrow and there is a fair amount car and bicycle traffic going both ways so that side too has its particular dangers. 

There is a parking lot at the Odarumi Pass.  The Odarumi Lodge/Campsite has transportation information, in Japanese, on their site.  The nearest station is Enzan.  It's an hour and a half by taxi from there.

I think that, for most people, the Odarumi Pass is a waypoint on a longer trek and not the starting point.  The last time I passed through there was on a 3-day-hike from the Mizugaki Sansou to Mt. Kobushigatake.  I take back what I wrote there.  I wrote that before making this trip.  I think the reason I didn't see anyone in the parking lot last time was because it was a weekday.  This time I was there on a Saturday and it was really crowded.  The parking lot holds probably 30 cars but it was already overflowing when I arrived--at 5 am.  On my way home, I counted the cars lining the road.  I stopped counting at 140. 🫨  

Map: 

For 2024, the Yama to Kogen Map is here: Kinpu Kobushi Map.  If that link goes dead in future years, try searching for  金峰・甲武信 on the  Mapple web site to get the latest Yama to Kogen Map.  

Weather Information: 

Kitaokusenjo's weather

Stats

Time

Total Time: 6:11  Break time: :35   Distance:  14.6 km

Elevation  

Lowest:  2,340 m Highest:  2,599 m Total Ascent:  1,093 m  Total Descent:  1,093 m

Stuff to think about

Technical considerations/difficulty:  

In summer, this is a fairly straightforward hike.  There are not so many chains or ladders in this area.  To the east of the pass, up to Mt. Kokushi, much of the trail is actually boarded over so it's very easy to walk.  Around Mt. Kinpu, there are some boulder fields where you need all four limbs to get along and it is quite exposed.  Mt. Kinpu is the highest point around for quite a ways so I imagine it is subject to some extreme weather in the winter.

Facilities:  

There is free parking and a public restroom next to the Odarumi Hut.  The hut has food, soft creams and a water hole. There is nothing on the trail except for a bench here and there.

Thoughts/observations/recommendations:  

Do it.  Any of these mountains are great. 

Picture Time

This is what the beginning of the forestry road looked like at 4:30 am.  

It was a little nerve-racking.

The Odarumi Hut

Easy-peasy

This is the top of Mt. Zen Kokushi ga Take  (Mt. Front Kokushi)  

Many Japanese mountains have sub-peaks named "Front" or "Back".  That is the "Zen" part of this mountain.  Kokushi means something like "Country" and "Teacher".  The scuttlebut is that the locals named it after a zen master/rennasissance man by the name of Muso Soseki.

Mt. Kinpu is the one just to the right of center in this picture.  The spiky thing just to the left of its highest point is a giant boulder.  I'll show you an up-close shot later.

I'll also put a lot of pictures with labels on them at the end of the post.

Remember I mentioned that I went here to bag one peak?  This was it.  Mt. Okusenjo.  No view or anything.  🤣  

6 hours driving.  6 hours walking.  Gas.  Wear and tear on the car.  . . .  Etc.  

Still worth it.

Kita Okusenjo

Frost!  🥶  The air temperature was way above freezing.  I did see a little--very little--ice on the trail, but this really surprised me.

The top of Mt. Asahi  ("Morning Sun")

Mt. Kurogane

The marker on Mt. Kinpu commemorates the 500th anniversary of Kofu.

This is on top of Kinpu.

This pile of stones is the rock I referenced way back in the post.  (You were paying attention, I hope.)  It's called Gojoiwa (五丈岩).  You can't climb it.  It's forbidden by the people in charge of the shrine.

That is Mount Mizugaki from Mt. Kinpu.  Mizugaki is one of my favorite mountains.  Isn't that cool looking?  Someday I will try to put it on the blog.  Mizugaki is one of many places I went before I started blogging.

More from Kinpu

And, for any of you nerds like me, I'll leave you with some labeled pictures so you can know what you're looking at.

I still had time to kill before going to Tokyo so I lounged at the Hayabusa Onsen over lunch after washing the grime away.  Very nice.

That's all for today.  Caveman out.

If you want to see another one of the Hundred Famous Mountains not far from these mountains, check out https://mymancaveisthemountains.blogspot.com/2023/07/kobushigatake-of-100-famous-mountains.html.