October 13th
Start&Finish: Takaosanguchi station (or Takao station on the JR line if you get lost!)
The weather: Hot and sunny, but over the worst of the summer heat.
Outfit/Equipment: Lightweight sports trousers, vest top, t-shirt, hat, sunglasses, fancy new hiking shoes.
Map: We had an old-school paper map from years back but it was something like this.
Crowds: Incredible numbers of people. Peak season plus a beautiful day.
Time: We started hiking around 10am and got back by around 1:30pm.
Difficulty: 21,150 steps.
Oh my goodness the people. The hundreds and thousands of people. No matter how lovely a place it might have been we just couldn’t take the mass of humanity. It was literally a queue up the mountain, even though we took the most ‘challenging’ route up. It had rained the night before and there was a stream running down the path so I was extremely thankful I had finally bitten the bullet and bought some proper, waterproof, hiking shoes.
We easily made it to the top by 11 so then started to cast about for side routes where we might be able to escape the worst of the crowds and our unerring ability to get lost finally came in useful! We followed a little side path on the way down and ended up on a totally different trail that was almost empty. It was very pretty and we were much happier, even though we hadn’t a clue where we were as we were now off the edge of the only map we had. We finally emerged into a cute little park with handy signs pointing the way to a station so we were able to follow them home.
Nice as it was, I don’t think we’ll go to Takao-san again. I’ve heard that the mountains further on from there are lovely so that’s a plan for another day.
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