Old Love. A sturdy couple in its golden years. Jiji and Baba Iwa.

Greetings cave crawlers and spelunkers of all ages.  Welcome back for another adventure.  This time our hero-🦸‍♀️ (Mine, too.  I am not much but I'm all I think about.)--like I was saying, our hero ducked over the prefectural lines for a hike in Gunma.  Actually it was up one of Gunma's 100 Famous Mountains--Mt. Mido (御堂山).  Here are the stats and details.

Location:  Gunma Prefecture, Shimonita

Starting and stopping point:  Mt. Mido Trailhead (御堂山登山口)

Peaks bagged: Mt. Mido and Mt. Amemiya 御堂山　雨宮山

Getting there/getting around:  I drove but there is a bus stop here.  You can get more information about the buses at this link.  Shimonita Municipal Bus info  That page is in Japanese but does have a link to automatic translation.

Map:  Yama to Kogen Chizu #21 西上州　妙義山・荒船山

Weather Information: Mt. Arafune's weather (not too far away)

Total Time:  4:18 Break time: 32  Distance:  9.4 km

Elevation:  Lowest: 340m Highest:  879 m Total Ascent: 805   Total Descent: 805 m

Technical considerations/difficulty:  

It's not high but there are a lot of steep parts.  There is quite a bit of climbing up and down through streams.  Slipping and falling are to be avoided like the plague.  Beware of leeches.  I'm glad I had a shaker full of salt with me.  It's a great leech repellant.  

You need to have a good nose for the trail as it isn't always marked so well.  The trail I came down wasn't the greatest.  It is a dotted-line trail (ie, not used much) on the map.  It was slow going because I had to pick my way down the stream.  

Even when the stream ended and the trail joined an "improved" road, the going wasn't any faster as the road has obviously been abandoned for some time and is covered with deadfalls and strewn with rocks.

Facilities:  Nothing.

Thoughts/observations/recommendations:  This was a great hike.  I had planned on doing one of the big boys of Yatsugatake on this day but decided not to because of weather considerations.  Instead, I chose to wait until the afternoon to start and do this shorter hike.  It's a bit out of the way so I didn't meet any other hikers.  That was great.  There weren't wonderful views throughout the hike, but the views there were were spectacular.  Jiji Iwa and Baba Iwa are really great.  I had hoped to get a great view of Mt. Myogi from Mt. Mido but was disappointed to find the view completely blocked by trees.  I was actually surprised to learn that Mido is one of Gunma's 100 Famous Mountains.  I thought the aforementioned rocks (Iwa) were much more interesting than Mt. Mido.  I did get some obstructed views of Mt. Myogi later in the day but none were as clear as I had hoped for.  Mt. Amemiya also had bupkis for views.  I added it on to the day's hike as an afterthought just because I had the time to bag another peak and add a few more miles.

Here are some pictures.

This hike was the day after a typhoon so the streams were high.

This was neat.  There is rope to the right of the falls to climb it.

The rope.

The unfortunate result of walking along and through so much water was leeches.  I am glad I had my trusty shaker full of salt.  I detected the little bloodsuckers early on and only one had attached before I got him to depart by assaulting him with salt. (Her?  How would I know?  I'm not a biologist.)  Even though I got rid of him right away, my ankle was still bleeding 4 hours later when I got home.  Leeches inject you with an anticoagulant and the bleeding will go on for a day or two if you don't keep a bandaid on it.  

Just around the corner from this I encountered the Jiji Iwa and Baba Iwa.  This hike was starting to get cool.

Ta da!

By the way, "Jiji" is a colloquial way of saying "old man" or "granddad."  "Baba" is for "old woman"/Grandma."  "Iwa" means "boulder."

These two are quite a couple, don't you think?

On the way down, more water.

And more water . . .

Almost back to civilization . . .

Thanks for joining me.  This was another great day.  I hope you can have this much fun yourself in your particular cave, whatever it is.

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ps  Almost forgot.  This was my best view of Mt. Myogi all day.

pps Oh, yeah, when I wasn't listening to birds chirping and brooks babbling, this is what I listened to:

Today's listening:  

Bible in a Year  "In The Bible in a Year podcast, Fr. Mike Schmitz walks you through the entire Bible in 365 episodes, providing commentary, reflection, and prayer along the way."   I was listening to stories about Kings David and Solomon.  Very cool. 

Warfare Podcast Episode Last letters of French Resistance Fighters  The Warfare podcast is related to History Hit.  They have a lot of great stuff.  These letters were the farewell letters of resistance fighters before they were executed.

and a ppps...  I saw this from the street on the way home.  It is a cool rock.