Even though I am still under my rehabilitation regimen, I was craving for hiking. So I decided to climb up
Toh no
dake. This is the first attempt of the long hike after my injury.
I usually prefer Mt.
Hiru in Tanzawa, located in the north side of the area, however, since my left arm is not completely recovered yet, I decided to climb more popular and well-managed mountain than rusty Mt.
Hiru, so that the risk of tripping over on the route is relatively less, presumably.
The Ohkura route has steep stairs literary forever to the top of
Toh no
dake. The route is called
Baka-O-Ne (A ridge with simple, stupid stairs) Since this route is quite well-known, well administrated and have huts and bathrooms.
We left home around 4:45 am, and reached to the 24 hour
parking lot nearby the entry point of the hiking trail in Okura around 6:15 am. The parking fee is 800 yen for a day. The parking lot machine only accepts 1000 yen bill and coins.
It was cloudy on that day, but no rains. The Oh
kura bus stop has a bathroom and the post you can submit your climber registration. Please submit it here, if you have not done so beforehand.
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| At the bus stop, waiting for us using bathroom in turn. |
At the 2km point, we found a camping ground. Apparently this is the only camping ground inside of the Tanzawa mountain area. Only if we could bring up water up here, we could enjoy camping in this silent environment away from city noise. Unfortunately, the hut was not in operation. They had closed business 3 years ago, according to the notice
in the front door. The camping ground is still free to use. We had a breakfast here looking down the great view of Sagami Bay.
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| From the front yard of the abandoned hut, we could see Sagami bay. |
Right after Miharashi Chaya, the course changed to have series of brutal steep stairs.
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| Miharashi hut |
I had my dog on my chest string, and my dog pulled me forward to her excitement from climbing. So I had an accelerating force to step forward. On the other hand, my husband had hard time to keep stepping up these forever-assertion of stairs. Naturally, as we climb up, the temperature goes down. Meanwhile, we get sweat from this vigorous exercise. This could be a problem as soon as we stop for rest, since our wet cloth immediately cool down our muscles.
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| Hanadate hut; Closed. The bathroom was in operation. |
At the top of the
Toh no
dake, icy gust of wind welcomed us! It was foggy, no view of other Tanzawa mountains, and
forget about Mt
. Fuji view! I managed to change my upper clothings in the bathroom at the Sonbutu hut. The usage of the bathroom is asking for 100 yen. Since we did not have changes, I bought a
memorambia pin for 500 yen, and gave the rest of the change to the bathroom for my small donation.
One of the party of 2 ladies at the top talked to us and the conversation was memorable. They looked like a mother and daughter, seemed to love dogs. The mother figure said "Did you carry your dog up to here?" I replied. "No, she...
wait, what is the question?" They said they have just lost their 14 year old doggie. I imagined that doggie would have been a happy toy breed.
We decided to use
Komaru route, rather than going back the exact same Ohkura route, which is getting busy in the middle of the day.
Komaru route is a bit quieter, but does not have get served by huts along the side of the route, meaning no bathrooms. We enjoyed the quiet, deep autumn mountain though. The end of the route is the prefecture park without any hard-to-walk rocks on the ground nor knee hurting slopes.
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| Quiet Komaru route |
We reached back to the parking lot around 15:00.
