Today was the first mountain trail in our new mission to try to do more hiking and mountain trailing! I have almost no experience since the only mountain I always go to is the most touristic and one of the easiest which is Mt. Takao. But Sho, he has been part of mount climbing group with firends so he’s already accumulated plenty of knowledge, fact that makes me a little lazy myself to prepare beforehand everything necesary, maps, tools etc.. So finally we started. The first one we chose is a trail very near our house. Before starting we had combini breakfast in Bushi station
To arrive to the start of the trail we just needed to go by train to a 5 stops away station called Musashi Yokote
The route of the trail was to start in either Musashi Yokote station or Koma station, go up to the lined three small mountains and go down exiting throuhg the other station.
As we chose Musashi Yokote as our starting point we found this pole sign marking the entrance of the trail
As we started the trail we notice the inclination that we were going uphill and the path was surrounded by huge pine trees
The first part of the trail is a walking throuhg a street going up hill so even it’s so quiet we could see around two cars coming so this part we need to walk on the side of the road.
One of our first checkpoints is Gojo Falls, all the way leading there we can appreciate a small water stream along the road, is so refreshing and relaxing by listening the water running.
After around 20-30 minutes walking we could spot the entrance of Gojo Falls, actually this is a shrine so there’s a small fee entrance of ¥200 which helps the shrine to keep maintenance to the place
It’s time to keep the way up to our first mountain ! So at this point the road of tall pine trees is finished and we headed to a clearer and high er area
We continued following the road which actually is still a car’s road so carefully headed up until our next checkpoint, Ojizou san ( little gods) statues
From this point we leave behind the car’s road and start follwing a small dirt trail which in several places is full of tree’s roots which add a new challenge on the walking
I’ve never used the hiking sticks, but as you feel you transform into another insect-like specie, you feel so much lighter and I must say they saved me around 3 times from loosing my balance.
Finally we made it to the top of the first mountain, Mt. Monomi, we did around 2 hours to get here, the view is not as wide but it’s a very nice spot to take a break and have lunch for the rest of the journey!
After finishing lunch is time to go down hill for later go up again for the next mountain.
Continuing this road you will find the entrance to go up to the top of Mt. Hiwada It may seem pretty steep and rocky but belive me, it’s worthy once you reach the top
After reaching the top when you are on your way down you will find a shrine, here you can have another amazing view of the city but this time with a great torii gate on it!
To continue going down is a very unique thing, we need to choose from two different roads the “woman road” or the “men road” As you can imagine the “woman road” is easier so we decided going that way this time since so far we have been walking for 4 to 5 hours approximately. Even we chose the woman road we remained very curious in knowing how hard was the men road, we will leave it for the next time!
Thank you so much if you have read until this point! To be true, I wanted to create a diary in which I can record our mountain journeys from now on since this will become our quality time project, I searched several jornal applications for smartphone but none seemed good enough and more over they were kind of pricey, Note is free and i think if someone could find useful information in our diary while post in it online then we can shoot two birds with one stone!