Mostly Japanese Mountains: Okutama

Showing posts with label Okutama. Show all posts

I wasn't planning on hiking yesterday. When I woke up and looked out the window towards the mountains, my plans changed. It had snowed the day before and the mountains were white. I couldn't give up the chance to play in the snow (at least) once more before it melts.

Mrs. Caveman hails from an island paradise where snow never falls. I'll never forget the look on her face one morning in New England when we opened the curtain and for the first time, she saw snow falling. She said, "It's magic!" Being from New England, I am not so apt to think of snow as magic all. But, she is right. It's magic!

I opted to head for Mt. Gozen yesterday. Mt. Gozen is the tall mountain on the right in the picture below. The pointy one on the left is Mt. Otake.

Mass Ave 975, 100109 (37), CC BY-SA 3.0

Those two mountains, along with nearby Mt. Mito, make up what is called the Okutama Sanzan 奥多摩三山. That means something like the Famous Three Okutama Mountains.

For my hike, I took my scooter to the Fujikura Bus Stop on Route 205 in Hinohara Village. You can get there by bus. The bus from Musashi Itsukaichi Station takes 49 minutes. Yikes.

This was my fifth time up Mt. Gozen and each trail I've taken up there has one characteristic in common. Each one is steep.

Really, after just about 5 minutes I had risen this high.

And it continued like that, unrelentlingly. No wonder I always have wobbly ankles for a day or so after climbing Gozen.

The snow made for a nice walk. Most of the time it was about 4~6" (10~15cm) of powder. It was easy to walk on and the rhythmic crunching sound of the snow being packed under my feet was meditative.

This picture below was my only glimpse of the mountain on the way up. Gozen seems to like to keep a low profile and it's not as popular as the other two members of the 3 famous mountains. Mt. Mito has the Tomin No Mori tourist facilities and a fantastic winding highway around it which both attract crowds. Mt. Otake is just a hop skip and a jump from uber-popular Mt. Mitake with its shrine, shops and its cablecar. Gozen has nothing commercial and is hidden from the view of downtown Tokyo behind the pointy-topped Otake.

It's almost like Otake is sticking its nose in the air like some kind of alpine snob.

Maybe Otake does that to compensate. It's actually shorter than Gozen but keeps up the illusion of being tall because it is between Gozen and downtown. Maybe we should rename it Mt. Napoleon.

From downtown, you can't even see Mt. Gozen because of Otake. This is what Otake looks like from the other side, though.

It is nice that Gozen is less popular. It was nice to walk on virgin snow. The only tracks on it were those of Bambi and Thumper.

This is the refuge hut below the summit. It's a nice spot and I've stayed there twice. They discourage hikers from using these huts these days though since the Coronavirus hit.

There's a water hole right next to the hut. The sign is cautioning people to boil the water because deer might be pooping in the stream.

Another shot of Mt. Otake.

This part is not far from Mt. Sogaku. It's awful. The first time I encountered it I was climbing up it. It seemed so treacherous that I thought I'd lost the trail. Yesterday was even worse. I was going down it and the snow cover hid slick mud and loose rocks.

It's also much steeper than it looks.

The 3rd member of the triumvirate appears, Mt. Mito. Mito (三頭山) translates directly as "3 Head Mountain". It got its name because it has 3 peaks.

This is the trail I took. It wasn't a very long hike distance-wise, but it did take me over 5 hours. The 1,167-meter change in elevation and the snow were factors.

Well, I think that's all for today. I am still on spring break and have my fingers crossed to get out again real soon. Drop by the cave anytime.

Once upon a Kamoshika

A nice walk from Okutama Lake to Okutama Station. Pleasantly surprised to see not one but two kamoshikas on the way.

This is Okutama Lake, a major source of Tokyo's water supply. It was created by damming the Tama River in 1957.

I took a bus here from Okutama Station. My plan, basically, was to walk along the Okutama Mukashi Michi from the lake back to the station. Muskashi means old. Michi means road. One way to translate it would be "The Old Okutama Road". Mukashi has another use, though. Japanese fairy tales always begin with "Mukashi mukashi"; ie, "Once upon a time."

Before actually going to the Mukashi Michi, I wandered around the dam and took a few pictures. Then I headed uphill behind the Okutama Water and Green Friendship Hall to check out those trails. There are a lot of switchbacks up a steep, southeast-facing slope and it offered some really spectacular views of the lake as the morning sun rose higher and higher over it.

As you can see from this map, a lot of trails were closed. I had to retrace my steps and start over to continue onto the Mukashi Michi but I had wanted to take a look around that hill for a long time and decided it was worth it.

It was! I ran into this guy. This is called, in Japanese, a kamoshika. The name is similar to the Japanese word for deer, but it's not. It's a serow in English. Out of all my trips into the Japanese woods, this is only my 4th sighting. And I got to see two at the same time today!

Not only were there kamoshika here, but there were a lot of monkeys. It was like a petting zoo.

My wildlife encounters weren't over. I found some poop!

I encounter scat (poop) in the woods often but usually have no idea what it is. Today I dropped into the Okutama Visitor's station before getting on the train and was told the poop in my picture is probably from a tanuki. (Japanese raccoon.) The reason the pile is so large is that they poop in a communal spot.

While I was there, I asked about bear poop. I know I've seen that before, too.

The Mukashi Michi was a very gentle, pleasant walk. I think this is my first hike in a few years that didn't bring me to some mountaintop or other. Most of the road is paved. Since I started at the lake (upstream), most of my walk was downhill. The only people I met on the trail were coming from the other direction. I liked my plan much more than theirs!

Remnants...

This is on the 3rd floor at the business across the street from the Mizune Parking Lot. On the street just below, there is a sign warning people to be careful of bees' nests. I don't think they are kidding.

A "grow operation" in the mountains.

The green stuff behind the fence is wasabi.

Getting there from Tachikawa means taking the Ome/Okutama train line to Okutama and then the #14 bus. From Tachikawa it would take about an hour and a half.

My jaunt was a nice, fairly gentle hike. I took my time because I took so many pictures and gawked at the kamoshikas but still finished in about 4 hours. It was a little more than 8 miles or 13 km. I walk a lot, though. Many might balk at walking 8 miles.

The Okutama Water and Green Friendship Hall has a lot of exhibits about drinking water and forests, but it's not geared to people who don't speak Japanese. That place has a nice cafeteria-type restaurant and a gift shop.

The dam has some exhibits, too. I seem to recall a diorama-type exhibit there.

If you are interested in the area but don't want to walk all the way back to Okutama Station, you might enjoy spending a few hours around the dam. One option would be to start at that Hall and take a walk to the far side of the dam to the Ikoinoro trail (いこいの路). https://goo.gl/maps/U1MBnBTPgCsNRW4w5

That trail traces along the lake so it's basically flat. It still manages to offer great views. I've seen lots of monkeys and once a bear on that side of the lake. I have even seen masses of bullfrogs doing things that I don't want to describe. It was yucky. My biologist nephew would probably think their activity was interesting. There are plenty of picnic tables around if you want to bring a lunch or you could drop into the restaurant at the Hall.

Hike from Nippara Limestone Cave to Daikyodaninomine

Greetings cave lovers. Today was a day that started, appropriately enough, at a cave. This is the Nippara Limestone Cave. You can reach it by bus from Okutama Station.

I didn't actually go in the cave this time. This picture is from the day I did go into the cave. This was in July several years ago. It was a superhot day, so I almost froze to death. Seriously, I thought I was going into hypothermia. I had taken my bicycle the 40-odd kilometers into the mountains to this cave and I was really hot and sweaty when I went in wearing just my shorts and a soaking wet t-shirt. Being a cave, it was cool. It felt like I was in a freezer.

Their site is here: http://www.nippara.com/nippara/syounyuudou/syounyuudou.html

Today, the cave was just my starting point for my hike. These two boulders in the first pictures are right next to the cave entrance.

The trail starts with the red stairs at the bottom of this picture. That building is part of a temple/shrine complex the trail passes through.

The trail I chose today is the dotted one I circled on the map below. Dotted trails are not so well-marked or maintained. The trail was fairly slow-going but not that difficult to follow. There's quite a steep ascent for a bit and it gets a bit more gentle as the trail follows a ridge. I went from the bottom right in the picture to about the place on the map marked with an exclamation point and then turned around.

The second mountain I passed over, 金袋--"kane-bukuro", made me laugh. It means "sack of gold." I didn't see any rainbows or leprechauns around, though.

It was a pleasant day for hiking. Temps were between -4C~5C. Not too cold.

There wasn't much snow and there wasn't much scenery. This ridge is hidden a bit between two higher ridges so there were precious few long-distance views. Those ridges seemed to have gathered quite a bit more snow on them than the one I was on. I didn't need my crampons.

This picture is the only unobstructed view I got all day.

The trail looked cool. Lots of rocks that reminded me of the Shire.

The good thing about hiking an out-of-the-way trail like this is that there are no other hikers. The only life forms I saw was a rangale of deer.

This is today's path. Like I said, it was slow-going. This took nearly 6 hours to go about 10 km. Last week I went 48 km just a little over double that time.

As I mentioned above, you can get to this area by bus from the Okutama Station. There is also trout fishing at several spots in this area.

Where to go next? According to this app, apparently, I've climbed almost 500 mountains! Where should I go for #500?

Cave art, 2021. 4/6. Jul-Aug

As hard as it may be to believe, this is in Tokyo.

Yamanashi

Venison. It's what's for dinner.

Such a beautiful area around Bandai in Fukushima

Just south of Daibosatsurei in Yamanashi

Early in the year, when I was diagnosed with cancer was learning that I'd be undergoing surgery, I made a promise to myself to climb Fuji before the end of the year.

It wasn't as much a Herculean task as I thought, evidently. Before my operation in June, I asked my surgeon if he thought it would be possible for me to climb it after the surgery. He said "No. The climbing season doesn't start until July. You'll have to wait until then."

Back to Saitama to Mt Ryokami

If you want to see something gross, look at the post of this trip that started and ended at Lake Miyagase. You can see leeches sucking the blood out of me.

https://mymancaveisthemountains.blogspot.com/2021/08/if-theres-anything-in-world-i-hate-its.html