Location: North 33.85350, East 134.09418 (GPS at the summit)
Difficulty: YDS 1,
Climbed August 10. 2016.
Information:
How to get there:
The hardest aspect of this climb is indeed the drive to the trailhead.
You approach the trailhead via Hwy. 238 (from NW) or Hwy. 239 (from N). These roads are
both narrow and full of curves. The trailhead is located where the two roads
meet. There is a two-level parking garage (free) at this trailhead.
The location is N33.86791, E134.08908, elevation about 1380 meter.
Route description:
Walk up and across the street from the parking, you will see a big
set of concrete steps leading uphill, that is, one starts out
on the left side of the road tunnel. This quite a bit left (when facing
uphill) from the lift area. There is a ski-lift that one may use, but its
elevation gain is small (and the price is high), so one should really hike
this peak from the base.
Follow the trsil from the top of the steps as it bears right and after a while
crosses under the lift in a small, protective tunnel. There are several
trails, but a good route is to keep left and follow the trail that heads
mostly uphill. This trail crosses near the top of the lift, then continues uphill
and arrives at the summit area via some buildings. Pass the building up on the
right, then arrive at a pretty large summit plateau. There are boardwalks
up here that will lead you to the highest point across the plateau.
Comments:
After quite a long and winding drive on rather narrow roads, we arrived at
the trailhead and parked at the lower level to keep the car in the shade while we
would be out walking.
We left at 0810 and immediately ran into
an official warning. We were not
scared and had a nice walk up the hill, arriving
at the summit after
50 minutes, at 0900. Good views,
but some clouds were drifting around.
We left the summit at 0915, deciding to make a circle hike by descending down
the trail that heads downhill directly from the summit point.
While descending this trail,
the nice peak Jirogyu caught our attention.
Thus, instead of turning right off the ridge before it levelled out,
we continued across the saddle and made
the easy climb along a nice
trail. We arrived at the summit
of Jirogyu 30 minutes after leaving our
first summit. This is also a very nice spot with good views
down the vallesy as well as across to
the main summit of Tsurugi.
After another 15 minutes here, we returned the same way, but took the
trail left instead of reclimbing Tsurugi. This trail traversed left
and actually needed to regain a bit of elevation before merging back
with the uphills trails from our trailhead. We were down in 50 minutes after
what had been an easy day on a nice mountain.
Here is a quick summary of peaks climbed in my trip to Japan.
