Hiking Oyama

With the good weather disappearing along with the Autumn leaves I decided it was now or never to go hike up Oyama which I had previously explored on my then-new motorbike.

After a late start (noon) I headed to the mountain. Luckily, it was a clear day or I would not have wasted my time.

The mountain:
I believe its twice the size of anything Connecticut offers.

Being a nice day it was ppaaaacckkeed. Traffic up the wazoo. But, riding alone on a small motorcycle allowed to me to skirt past in the drains or on the other side of the road. Even the traffic workers waved me on down the wrong side of the road.

Having missed the "secret" road I had found before that goes further up I parked near the entrance of the souvenir alley leading to the bottom of the mountain cable car. After seeing the hour long line for the cable car I decide to rough up to the main temple.

I thought it would be a nice stroll in the woods but turned out to be about an hour of scaling rocks and logs. The following picture what I would call stage 1-


And this was the easy part of it.

Half way up the cable car laden section was the shrine I visited before-

Finally, at the most destination for most visitors-

The view from here was incredible-

Now, having gotten this far, I was determined to go the extra hour to the top.
The start of the trail right after the temple started as this-
and deceived you by go to this in a matter of 10 seconds, stage 2.5 -

After an hour of this I wanted to die. I didn't even take a picture of what I would call stage 4 but damn, it makes sense how I saw only 3% of the people from before going this far. But, it was worth it-


Had I climbed earlier in the day I would have been able to see Tokyo some 60km away.

By then it was getting dark and getting down to the cable car was everyone's main priority. I was apart of a small train of 15 people scrambling down the rocks in very very little light. It was a little scary honestly. People were sliding and falling all over the place and I was no exception. And, I knew once I got to the cable car checkpoint I had a nice long line to wait in because hiking down another hour was not an option.

So it was a very long day and my legs are killing me a day later. But, it was worth it. See flickr for more photos.

おやすみなさい　o-ya-su-mi-na-sai goodnight