I hiked a bit in Gunma yesterday. This is a report on that hike from Sengataki Falls to Tatsuiwa to Hoshio Pass and back on a loop. I had also planned on popping up to the top of Mt. Gyozuka (経塚山) but decided to forego that as the weather changed.
Well, the weather did change, but actually I just got lost. I mean, I was temporarily someplace different than I thought I was. (I think maybe I shouldn't have made the turn at Albuquerque.) It doesn't really matter. I've been on that peak 2 or 3 times and there really isn't a view to speak of.
. . . about Tatsuiwa
Tatsu (立) means "Stand." Iwa (岩) means boulder.
Area: Nanmoku (南牧) Village
This is in a fairly remote corner of Gunma that is serviced by just a few narrow roads. The mountains aren't very high, but they are rugged. Along with mountain trails for hiking, there are many scenic falls. Check out the municipal web page for some pictures.
The demographic situation is depressing. It's the oldest village in Japan. Initially, when I saw that it was billed as the oldest village, I thought it was probably hype to entice tourism. No. It's not the oldest municipality. It's the oldest in average age.
And of course, the population is shrinking. It is, like so much of Japan, turning into a ghost town.
It's sad. I hope Japanese people start having babies. Many of my favorite people are Japanese. There should be more of them.
I drove. There's free parking at the trailhead for about 6~7 cars.
There is a bus from Shimonita (下仁田) to Hanezawa (羽沢). 35 minutes. There are 1~6 buses per day and very few on the weekend. Hanezawa is about an hour's walk from the trailhead. This is the timetable on the village's website. It is dated 2016.
A taxi from Shimonita to Sengataki (right near the trailhead) is about 40 minutes and cost ¥8,000 in 2023.
Elevation:Lowest: 709 m Highest: 1,312 m Total Ascent: 974 m Total Descent: 970 m
Technical considerations/difficulty:
There are a LOT of chains and ropes. All of the hike is below the treeline, but is still characterized by high, very narrow ridges which fall off steeply. I really wouldn't want to fall of one of them.
When you're not pulling yourself up on a chain or walking a ridge like a tightrope, you're apt to get lost in the woods. There are several areas that are very nondescript and where the trail is hard to identify. Even though there are pink tapes here and there, they aren't always easy to spot and it's important to keep checking your GPS. The Caveman is pretty good with a map and compass--but I admit that I'd have a hard time navigating here with just a paper map.
Facilities:
Nothing
(Along with all the regular stuff such as maps, headlamps, boots, feet, and brains, . . .) don't forget:
Your GPS device. It's very easy to get lost here.
Gloves. There are a lot of chains and ropes. If they were wet or cold, gloves would be necessary.
Thoughts/observations/recommendations:
I wouldn't go to this area in inclement weather. Not only are the chains and boulders on the trail a bit spicy, but just getting there can be a bit like a wild wilderness trek, too. Going over there from the Nagano side, there are Route 299 and Route 93. Route 299 was out of commission for a long time after some bad weather a few years ago. It's open now, but that circumstance gives you an idea of the driving situation you can experience in the area. The other road, the one that I took yesterday, is the Prefectural Road 93 (下仁田〜臼田線 Shimonita~Usuda Line). That is about 25 km from the Gunma side over to the Nagano side and is one narrow lane almost the entire way! It's long, steep, and winding but there are very few mirrors to let you know if there is any oncoming traffic. It's a bit nerve-wracking and I really wouldn't want to encounter a downed tree or some other obstacle on that road.
Here're some pictures:
The day's destination spied from the road.
Trailhead
There are lots of ropes and chains.
Around the top of Tatsuiwa
The top of Mitsuiwa
When I first saw this, my reaction was a bit of disbelief.
It wasn't as difficult as it looks.
Sengataki Falls
35 meters high
The parking lot at the trailhead. I guess about 7 or 8 cars could fit. It's a dead end. I wonder if it ever gets filled up.
Well, that's all for today.
Keep your fingers crossed. I have a day off tomorrow and plan on hitting the Northern Alps if the weather is ok.
The picture above is of Mt. Arafune. That is part of a collection of mountains on the border between Nagano and Gunma. Route 254 goes from Nagano into Gunma via the Uchiyama Tunnel which is under the Uchiyama Pass, which is between the spot where this picture was taken and Mt. Arafune. This side of the pass is an area with a lot of summer homes tucked deep in the woods. It's full of deer and other wildlife such as rabbits, foxes and even bears. There is a campground and panorama viewing spot (Arafune Panorama Campfield), a dairy farm with a restaurant as well as a petting zoo Suetoshi Farm nearby.
Area:
Location:
Map: ***If you want a link to the latest Yama to Kogen map, comment and I'll get you a link. This link is to a printable topo map of Mt. Monomi
Starting and stopping point: I started in the Nozawa section of Saku City on my bicycle for both trips.
Peaks bagged: Kumakura(熊倉峰) ~ Monomi(物見)
(First-time) peaks # ーーー
Getting there/getting around:Bicycle for both of these days. There is free parking at both trailheads.
Each of the two days was slightly different since the routes and destinations weren't the same. Each day was 10-12 miles uphill by bicycle to a trailhead where I hike another mile or so to a peak. The first day I climbed Kumakura. The second day I climbed Monomi. The first day took 2 hours 19 minutes. The second day took 3 hours 42 minutes.
Facilities:
The trailhead to Monomi is near the campground so I suppose there are toilets. There is a porta-potty at the trailhead to Kumakura. That trailhead also serves Mt. Arafune, too.
Thoughts/observations/recommendations:
I love where I live. I love where I work. I could do both of these excursions before work on weekdays!
The first pictures are from the bike ride to Kumakura. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and the views weren't great.
I was surprised to see there were already hikers heading up to Arafune.
The top of Kumakura
The next pictures are of the trip to Monomi.
Mt. Asama before sunrise
This is the giant cosmos field next to the campground. I was really surprised this am not to encounter any deer there. There are usually a lot.
That's Mt. Arafune
Imakura is where I was the week before.
Looking out toward Myogi
Well, that's all for today.
Make sure you share this with all your friends.
Here's another early morning hike I made on Arafune at the beginning of the month.
Mt. Gohyaku is not actually the main attraction for this area. This area is known as the East Mountains of Nagaoka City. Gohyaku is kind of like the ugly little sister to nearby Mt. Nokogiri. That is a very popular mountain with nice views. You can see the Sea of Japan to the west and snow-capped mountains to the east. Nokogiri (鋸) means sawtooth in Japanese. It's a popular name for mountains. This hike also took in Mt. Onikura (鬼倉), which means "Demon warehouse." That mountain has little to recommend itself for.
Being near the Sea of Japan, this area gets a tremendous amount of snow and most of the forestry roads are still covered with snow now (early May). There is still snow on the mountains, but most of the trails are void of the white stuff and the mountain flowers are springing up while the snow is still melting.
I picked this mountain just for its name. I'll write much about that later in the post. For now, I will get the details of this particular hike out of the way.
The Caveman's actual time Total: 5:27 Break time: :24 Distance: 11.4 km
Elevation:Lowest: 215 m Highest: 765 m Total Ascent: 1,087 m Total Descent: 1,087 m
Technical considerations/difficulty:
The hike to Nokogiri is straightforward with no ropes, chains or ladders. From Nokogiri on to Onikura and Gohyaku it's a different story. The trail is not used much so it's easy to get lost. There are several areas with ropes and it's easy to slip.
Facilities:
There's a porta potty at the parking lot. There is also a waterhole just behind the parking lot. There are no facilities on the trail.
Thoughts/observations/recommendations:
Something that was interesting was the evidence of wildlife. There were several--I mean like 10 or 20--piles of scat (poop) on the trail. I had assumed they might be from tanuki because of the shape and for the fact that groups tanuki tend to poop in the same place. BUT, while I was eating lunch, I was crept up on by an anaguma--Japanese badger. Perhaps the piles of poop were from badgers. Unfortunately, the badger got spooked and ran away before I could get my iphone out to take a picture. Truth be told, I was as freaked out as the badger was when I first saw it.
Let's get some pictures out...
Well, cavekids, I finally did it. I have had my eye on this Mount Gohyaku since January of 2022. This was my third attempt to climb it.
Mt. Gohyaku is not the tallest or most exciting mountain I have climbed. I climbed it just for its name. Let me back up a few years to explain.
My hiking app, YAMAP, keeps track of various statistics. One of them is a running tally of the number of distinct peaks one has summited. Around the end of 2021 I realized that I was going to pass the 500 mark soon.
I wanted to mark the event in a special way and searched to find out if there are any mountains in Japan named 500 (gohyaku in Japanese).
There are! I found 2. One is this one I climbed the other day. It's in Niigata Prefecture. The other is in Nagano.
Neither mountain is very high. I was living in Tokyo at the time and assumed that the conditions wouldn't be too different from mountains of similar elevation in my local area. Heck, most of the mountains in the Okutama area are higher than both of the mountains named Gohyaku.
When my app read 499, I got up early on a January morning and took a shinkansen to the other side of Japan to climb the Gohyaku in Niigata. At Nagaoka Station, I grabbed a taxi and told my driver where I wanted to go. He looked at me and my backpack with an expression that said, "Really?"
Well. I discovered that the conditions on the ground in Niigata were different than in Tokyo. I hadn't taken into account that the Sea of Japan side is colder than the Pacific side and that it gets more snow.
A lot more.
I mean a lot.
This is what I faced when the cabbie let me out.
No wonder he'd looked at me funny.
It was useless. I was totally unprepared. I had no snowshoes.
Since I had invested so much time and money already, I decided to go as far as possible.
You can see that I only made it 900 meters or so in almost an hour before giving up.
That is my leg in the snow. It's over my knees.
It was a gorgeous day, but futile.
I gave up and walked the 6 or 7 km to the station and then went home with my tail between my legs.
The good news is that a week or two later I rented some snow shoes and was able to do the other Gohyaku in Nagano.
(Now I have my own snowshoes--two pair, actually. I use them all the time.)
Fast-forward to 2025 and I was now approaching my 1,000th peak.
It was a no-brainer that Gohyaku should be the one to do it on. After all, 500+500=1,000, right?
Well, since it was winter, I wanted to make sure this was possible. I've done a fair amount of hiking in the snow since my first failed attempt but wanted to be sure about the snow conditions.
Through YAMAP, I found a guy in the local area in February and started to ask him about the snow conditions. According to him, even though the snow was high, it was stable and that you could traverse the area on skis or snowshoes.
I was psyched!
This time, I was driving.
If I ever find the guy that told me the snow was ok, I might punch him in the nose.
This is what I found when I got to the area.
It's not the depth of the snow that was concerning me. It is the wrinkles and waves that you see. There had been some melting and the shape of this snow is a sign of danger of avalanche. I already had decided to give up on hiking before I reached the trailhead and when I talked to some locals they were astonished that I had even thought of hiking in Nagaoka that day.
Drats. Thwarted again!
That was in March. Now it's May.
I went back to Gohyaku yesterday during Golden Week and finally knocked it out. I'll put a few pictures of it here. It isn't the most photogenic of the mountains I've climbed. It wasn't the highest, either. I am kind of glad it was a challenge, though.
Remember this picture?
This is the same spot yesterday.
January:
May: (This time I could drive by here.)
The trailhead is actually about 1,000 meters up the road from where the taxi dropped me on that January morning. I didn't even get that far that morning.
This is the trailhead.
The sign has all the typical cautions.
"Make sure you're equipped.""Did you bring water?"
"Man-eating bear on the loose this week."
blah blah blah
Lots of interesting flora
Nagaoka City in the foreground. The Sea of Japan behind it.
Hanatate Pass (花立峠)
There was a looooot of poop up there. Seriously, there were like 20 piles like this.
I saw one of those bear bells in the middle of one of the piles. I wonder what that could mean.
Mt. Onikura doesn't get much attention.
It's just as well. With a name means "Demon Warehouse" it probably needs an exorcism.
There were ropes on that side of Nokogiri. It was easier to get lost and the footing is not so great.
There were really a lot of people there. And they were all locals.
I was surprised when I showed up at this parking lot at 6:30 that I was not the first person there.
I really was not expecting to see this many people when I came off the trail.
The water hole is called something like "Fountain of Youth."
"The Fountain of Youth"
1 cup will give you 5 years
2 cups will give you 10 years
3 cups is the limit
On the way home, I dropped by the Aso Onsen.
It's a nice place.
I'd never seen this deal at an onsen. I don't know why not. It makes perfect sense.
It's a package deal for a a bath and lunch. (Not available during holidays, though.)
Well, I guess that's it for my report on Gohyaku.
I do still want to reminisce a bit. I had thought about putting up some of my favorite pictures to date but the task is too overwhelming.
It is kind of cool to look back. My footprint in Japan looks like this.
There are two dots on the northernmost island of Hokkaido.
Most of my footprints have been in the middle of Honshu.
A few hikes show up way down in the southwest on the island of Kyushu.
I used to live in western Tokyo and most of the miles I've put on my boots have been there.
I feel a kind of territorial need to not leave un-broken lines on my footprints so I can trace my footprints from Tokyo Station to Kanawa, Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka, around Lake Hakone, around all the Fuji Five Lakes, to Saitam, Gunma and Nagano.
I moved to Nagano two years ago and have been trying to do the same type of thing here.
There are so many mountains.
They are always calling me.
Statistics are kind of fun. Now I have climbed 1,019 peaks. Many of them I have done more than once though. I think I have actually summited some mountain or other about 1,600 times.
I've climbed a mountain in 18 out of the 47 prefectures in Japan.
I've climbed the highest mountain in Japan, the highest one on Hokkaido, on Kyushu and of several prefectures. I've climbed the 4 highest mountains in the country.
Since 2018, my total elevation climbed is now 465,932 m (290 miles) and I have walked 6,572 km (4,083 miles).
I've burned 925,000 calories. (Why am I still carrying 20 extra pounds?)
As far as the mountains I have climbed the most, Mt. Kokuzo, a little hill near home is #1. I have climbed that 39 times. #2 is also in this area. Hiraofuji has been summited 12 times. (Two of those times I carried my bicycle to the top.) #3 is back in Tokyo. I showed Mt. Hinode some love 10 times. Makiyose, Otake, Aso and Mito were all climbed 8 times. Jinba, Iwatakeishi, Onuta and Akaru (in Nagano) came in at 7. Kumotori, Takanosu and a host of others at 6. Among a long list of 5-timers are Daibosatsurei and Nanatsuishi. There are too many on the lists of 2, 3 or 4 times to think of.
I'm glad that YAMAP keeps good records and I'm glad for this blog. I know not many people read this. (Actually, I doubt anyone has read this far on this post.) I have a bad memory and I want to be able to recall all these amazing experiences I've been allowed to have. Someday I won't be living here and/or I won't be able to do all this physical activity so I want to be able to savor it as much as possible.
