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?
Yesterday was the Coming of Age holiday here in Japan. Coming of Age Day is to commemorate Japanese people who've reached majority (now 20 years old) in the past year. Young people return to their hometowns and attend ceremonies. The girls wear kimonos and the boys wear suits so it is a great day for people-watching.
I'm neither Japanese nor 20 so I decided to celebrate the day off in my own way. I went to Mt. Fuji.
My goal wasn't to get to the top--just halfway. I've climbed to the top from the 5th Station before but have never actually climbed up to that point. Doing this enabled me to connect the dots as it were of the paths I have trodden. Completing this task yesterday was the last stretch of un-hiked road between my home and the top of Fuji.
I left home early and caught the Fujikyu train in Otsuki. Isn't it cute?
This is the view that greeted me when I alighted at Shimoyoshida Station about an hour later. I really wish the telephone lines didn't obstruct the view.
First, I walked through the city for a few miles. This torii (pronounced toe ree) gate has a sign that says "Mt. Fuji".
Getting closer to the trail that will head up the mountain, I passed through the Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen Shrine (北口本宮冨士浅間神社). I took several pictures.
Shortly after passing through that shrine, I stepped onto the Fujiyoshida Yuhodo (富士吉田遊歩道)--the excursion trail. It was like this for a few miles, rising steadily but not steeply, and not turning much to left or right.
It was about here that I bumped into hikers for the first time. I met two guys in succession who evidently had summited the mountain. They were all kitted out with giant packs, pickaxes and the like. I don't think they were together.
A little later, I came across a group of about ten middle-aged women being led by two male guides. I don't think they had summited. I think they probably were just hiking below the 5th Station as I was.
They were the only hikers I saw. I did see two other guys on the mountain who were driving a tracked snow vehicle but it was a pretty solitary day.
Several miles later, long after the pavement ran out, I hit the first snow around the 2nd Station and donned my crampons.
This post (二合目) denotes the 2nd Station. There are 9 stations on Mt. Fuji. I don't know exactly how they determined where the stations should be but it seems to be according to where rest stops are or were in the past.
Early in the morning, the sky was beautiful. The main reason I chose that day for Fuji was that the forecast was for clear skies.
This is a scenic overlook. Isn't it great? (grrrr)
Further along the trail, I came to another overlook. Breathtaking, I'm sure.
Thankfully, the weather wasn't that bad. I forgot my thermometer that day but imagine the coldest it got was in the mid-20s (Fahrenheit) (-4 or -5 Celsius).
The amount and type of snow were agreeable, too. For the most part, the snow was hard and crusty. Only 2 or 3 times did my feet sink below the surface. Even then, it was only knee-deep.
The sun made an appearance right around lunchtime and I started snapping away.
One nice thing about hiking in an area with lots of untrodden snow was the plethora of animal tracks.
Fuji is closed above the 5th Station but I snuck up just a little further to the 6th because there is a mountain on my map near there that I wanted to cross off my bucket list. When I got there I was disappointed because there is no marker on the ground. I have no idea how it rates as being a mountain. It's barely a hill. It's not even a pimple on the gargantuan protuberance of Fuji.
If you have been up the Yoshida Trail, you should recognize this spot.
This is the 5th Station on the Subaru Line. During hiking season, people arrive and depart the mountain at a bus stop here.
I had planned on descending on a trail but got a bit worried about time. I arrived here about 2:15 in the afternoon and was concerned about the possibility of getting lost on a trail after dark. I was 99% sure I could get back down the trail I'd come. The trail wasn't hard and I thought the chance of getting lost was slim even in the dark. What if I slipped and broke a leg? There is another trail near this spot I considered but didn't want to try something unknown if there was the chance of being caught in the dark. I decided the most prudent thing would be to follow the bus route down to the bottom. Doing this would add about 20 km to my hike. Doing that meant it was sure I wouldn't make down it before the sunset but I felt safer being on a roadway than on a trail.
This is what the street looked like as I started.
Along the way, the sun came out a few times and I got some nice views.
That is the street I was walking on. Depending on how much sun the street got the conditions varied from bare pavement to ice to crusty snow to about a foot of powder. I am really, really glad there wasn't much snow. (I wouldn't have made this hike if there was a lot of snow, though.)
As the sun went down I got some great glimpses of the mountaintop.
Thanks to the half-moon last night I didn't need to wear a headlamp to see the road.
The woods were really dark, however, and I could not see far into them. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I first heard an animal I had startled. It was probably my imagination, but I thought it was a bear. I also thought it was big. Maybe it was. I don't know. It probably was a bunny rabbit. Whatever it was, I am glad it ran away from me and not toward me.
Soon after that, I startled some monkeys. That made me feel like I had wandered onto the planet of the apes.
Those experiences creeped me out.
I've never liked or sported bear bells. I usually listen to something on my iphone if I hike during early morning or twilight to try and warn the bears I'm coming. After these two experiences last night, I also started to sing, talk and shout as I walked along.
I don't know what time they locked this gate, but I must have still been on the mountain when they did it. Oops.
About 13 hours after I started, I got to the station. Hooray!
This was my longest hike ever. 48km.
These videos of the avatar hiking are always 30 seconds long. This one makes me laugh because the little hiker has to fly along to get from start to finish within the time limit.
For the last hike of 2021, I dropped by Sagamihara City in Kanagawa to tackle a trail I'd had my eye on for a long time. I'd wanted to climb Mt. Yakeyama since 2019. (Yakiyama? I've seen it written both ways.) The trail was closed due to typhoon damage most of that time.
The view from Yakiyama (Yakeyama?) was great. It was there that I spied Mt. Bukka and decided that it had to go on the bucket list.
So, I went back to the area and climbed Mt. Bukka yesterday.
For this hike, I started at this park near the Miyagase Dam. I didn't actually know this park existed until I was passing by it on my way to the other side of the dam where I had initially planned to start.
This park is run by the Kanagawa Prefectural government and looks like a great place for a picnic or some kind of family outing. There are wide open areas to play on the grass, flowerbeds, gardens, an "adventure forest" and the dam nearby. It looks like a nice place to spend a day.
The park's website is here. http://www.aikawa-park.jp/
The park is part of the dam complex.
This picture is from the dam. There are lots of exhibits in the dam but they were closed when I was
there--and I was only interested in passing from one side to the other anyway.
If you are interested in learning more about this dam, check out this blogpost I found. It's very detailed!
Just about the first thing I encountered on the trail was this sign. I can attest to its veracity. They aren't kidding. See this post if you want proof.
(The word for leech in Japanese, 蛭, is pronounced like "hiru". The highest mountain in the area is 蛭ヶ岳, Mt. Hiru. I mentioned this interesting factoid to an old guy I met on the trail yesterday and he tried to tell me that the "hiru" of the mountain's name is a different word than leech, that the Japanese character pronounced "hiru" for the mountain really is a Buddhist word. I can read enough Japanese to know he's full of it, though. It's not the first time Japanese people have tried to gaslight me about mountain information. Another time another old guy tried to tell me there was no mountain named Tanzawa when we were both looking directly at it. Sheesh.
I didn't tell either of these guys what I knew. I just said "ah so.")
One of the reasons I wanted to do this hike is because of the lake. I love walking next to water. Some of these reservoirs in Japan, despite being manmade, are really beautiful.
This is on the way up the trail.
And this is when I was walking back along the road. I got lots of great views of the lake.
You may notice that my trail was in something of a figure 8 pattern. That is because the road that I returned along didn't intersect the mountain trail as I assumed it would. I couldn't close the loop as I hoped. That was a pretty dumb mistake. The road passed under the trail in a tunnel and I had to walk an extra few miles before I reached a roadway which looped back to the Aikawa Park. It's a good thing I like walking!
Getting there/final thoughts
Public transportation to the dam or a trailhead would be very difficult. You could get to the dam from Sagamiko or Hashimoto in about an hour after a few bus transfers. Alternatively, you could get to a trailhead for Mt. Bukka (quite far from the dam) after a 45-minute bus ride from Hon Atsugi.
Car or bike are better bets. The dam/Aikawa Park are accessible from Route 412 in Sagamihara. It's about 30 minutes by car from Hachioji.
The park, the dam and even the mountains offer a great opportunity for leisure suitable for all ages. The mountains are not very high. Not only did I see grandparents and small children, I even saw some pets on the trail. I do think that wasn't the best idea, though. I saw one guy hand-carrying his dog up the trail! Poor little Fifi couldn't handle it, I guess.
