Mitsu-toge yama [三つ峠山] - day 1

On a not particularly sunny monday we headed off to Mitsu touge station [三つ峠駅] via Shinjuku [新宿] and Takao [高尾], the latter station is not very frequent and also not on JR.

A mountain side love letter somewhere after Tachikawa i think...

We eventually got to Mitsu-touge station just after 1pm, and walked straight into rain. It was only light showering, but it wasn't making the walk much more pleasant or warmer... we came across some beautiful maple type trees in peoples gardens...

Here's the maple and Greg disagreeing with the weather...

After a while of walking through the town/residential area....we reached the beginning of the hike, and after taking a little rest from the rain to have lunch, we started off on the road which lead us part the way up the mountain. I took plenty of little breaks to rest my poor little chicken lungs (which seemed to worry Greg a lot, who was doing his best to look after me having already taken the heaviest stuff in hie rucksack). In fact I think I spent more time resting than walking. Anyway, despite the steepness of the hike when we reached the forested areas, it was much nicer walking and clambering up rocks under the trees than on the tarmaced road. That, and under the trees you didn't notice the rain so much.

Over three hours later we reached the 88 buddahs [八十八大師、はちじゅうはちだいし] all perched on rather a steep hill side along the hiking trail we were following. Despite the sparse signage, it was pretty much impossible to get off the track, as it was well trodden and even if the path did diverge at any point, it was pretty sure to rejoin to the same path no matter which direction you took.

me doing lots of trudging and then some blurry buddahs...

After the buddahs things got a bit more rocky, with the trail winding through some windy, misty and dark valley, where some rock slides had destroyed part of the path in places. There had also been some attempts to make the trail safer my building wooden walkways in places...mainly to span scarier bits of the hike.


On the more exposed top of the mountain the wind nearly blew us off our feet. After a short battle with aeolian forces we reached a very important fork in the trail to take us to the mountain huts. We took the steps to the right and climbed up several flights before coming into view of the climbing area and then finally the hut. We quickly decided against camping in the viciously exposed mountain top, in favour of sleeping in the mountain hut for the night.

Cost of sleeping in the mountain hut:5000円/person

We were two of four guests, so lots of space for us. The lady who was looking after the hut also sat down to have a little chat with us, and very kindly offered us a nice plate of fresh tomatoes to go with our dinner!

A mist covered rock fall in the valley and a very wet view of the climbing wall