2013-05-26 雲取山

Day hike at Kumotoriyama This time I beat 2 personal bests: longest hike and fastest hike vs. map time (details at the end) Kumotoriyama is the highest point of Tokyo prefecture at 2017m high. Although in Tokyo it is far away from any cities and makes one easily forget its location. The trail starts from Kamosawa bus stop (540m), leaving from Tokyo in the morning the first bus one can possibly catch leaves from Okutama station at 7:00, and takes 33 minutes to get to the bus stop. From there the trail is indicated very clearly all the way to the top. The bus driver will even indicate which bus stop corresponds to the trail head (part of the 100名山 hype I guess) From the bus stop to the real trail head (map time 0:30) it is mainly a paved road with relatively nice views of the surrounding mountains and a few openings on the river. The trail then follows the 登り尾根 (climbing ridge) straight towards Nanatsu ishi yama (1757m) . The trail is very well indicated all the way with absolutely no technical difficulties although slightly exposed on the right side and narrow passages may require care when people come from the other side. The slope is mostly very gentle especially for the first half up to the water source (a few minutes on the side of the trail). As completely covered by tall trees there is absolutely no view and there is nothing else to do but press on towards the summit. At the beginning 2 mountain bikers passed but after a while the slope got steeper and roots became a hurdle for cycles I passed them again ( I met them again a few minutes after I reached the summit while I was going down and them were nearing it) The trail reaches an intersection after a few kilometers (map time2:35) and then bypasses Nanatsu ishi yama and goes West towards Kumotori. Up to that point I met as much as 300 hikers going down the mountain after a nigh around the summit, surely enough the "100 famous mountains" label attracts people like shit attract flies. Kumotori is a nice hike OK but it becomes annoying to say "Konnichiha" hundreds of time especially when the purpose is to hike as fast as possible and the amount of saliva limited. Fortunately the bear bell is a very efficient device to make people yield to the crazy foreigner like me. In spite of that on this hike time and again I had to run on the side of the trail to dodge slow hikers or oncoming traffic. From the intersection to the summit the trail is first still entirely in the forest with long flat parts and few steep uphills exposed to the sun. On the way there is a hut with adjacent campsite and heliport on the side of which a source is located a few minutes away. The overall elevation gain on this side of the trail (map time 2:15) is less than 400 meters but the changes between flat soft grassy stretches and quite steep rocky and dry parts are overall more interesting than the first part of the ascent. The view also opens towards the West while the summit is only visible at the very end of the trail. After a final steep stretch I reached the summit of Tokyo prefecture(the sign says it's in Saitama, well it's at the border) in 2:30 (against map time 5:20). The view there is not particularly striking unlike what the map claims, it must be said that it was getting a bit cloudy then. For a while the downhill trail follows the same trail used to go uphill (at the end of it I met quite a few people I passed on the way up) and the last part goes towards Nanatsu ishi yama (map time 1:25 including a stop by the water source). The water source next to the campsite is actually a trickle with a debit of about 2L/minute. It's been engineered in some fashion to make it easy to refill one's bottle but the flip side is that a very rusty hose cut in half provides the water, for a while I wished I had some pills to purify the water but after more than 24 hours still no symptom to declare. The trail to Okutama station seems interminable (6:45 and it doesn't count a few local summits on the way which must add roughly 0:30 to 1:00) and although it appears quite flat from the GPS data, there are some very steep parts here and there and there is no long monotonous gentle downhill slope in fact. As the weather became cloudy there was nothing else to do but to keep going at at a sustained pace. Indeed there was no time to chat with the guys commenting on my speed (most people go to Kumotori as a 2-day hike and and make it way shorter than 30 km in total). Among the several small summit on the way to the station Takanosu is probably the most famous judging by the crowd I encountered at the summit. The view from there is also comparatively better than from the other ones even if there is very little change in elevation. The downhill slope from there is quite steep and very enjoyable to do running. The last part of the downhill towards the station becomes steeper in average with locally very steep stretches with rocks and roots but overall it is still quite easy to walk this trail. The final part is almost entirely on the road and leads to the station (and ice cream at the nearby store) GPS stats: Distance: 30.85 km Accum. climb: 2,132 m Mean Moving Speed: 4.8 km/h Duration 7:08 (map time * 51%) Total map time: about 14:00 More pictures here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sh5kyx2m5pmutua/e5wtIGE66Q