8 November 2024
Slow motion bear shield
Hodatsusan from Menden station
As I mentioned above the main hike in this area had a confirmed bear and cub sighting recently. So today I decided to go somewhere else and leave the bear infested trail for Sunday when there will be a lot more tasty hikers for the bear to choose from.
Hodatsusan is a small mountain, but it has a great view of the central alps, it is also not too far on the train, and I saw no mention of a bear on recent reports by hikers on the Japanese language only Yamap site.
The train to get there does need a bit of explanation, it starts off from Kanazawa as a line with a complex name but then becomes the Nanao line, which is still impacted by last years earthquake. This means it is running with less carriages, less often, and there is a guy in high vis riding the train next to the driver who I presume at some point after I got off coordinates safe passage through a busted up area of track... but that was not the tricky part of the journey for me.
Every single station along the journey except Menden, where I got off and later back on again, has the IC card scanners on the train platform. At Menden you must touch off on the train itself, do not forget! And then when you get back on at Menden remember to touch back on. I have stuffed up doing this before somewhere else, and when that happens you have to go to a manned gate, explain how you stuffed up to someone that does not speak English, and then hopefully he will do something to your card with a 1970s computer so it will work again.
Anyway, the hike was short, not too high, great weather, good views... now for the stats.
29,600 steps
18.92km
5 hours and 6 minutes
1,082 calories
760m vertical ascent - but some is still pretty steep.
It is not often that photo of the day on a hiking day has nothing to do with the hike, but today is that day. Here is Kanazawa station with great light.
The view towards Hodatsusan from Menden station. It looks tiny from here. It is about 3km to the start of the trail from the station, I include those km in the stats as I figure most people that read this are going from the station and not driving. Note that the station is literally in farm land.
Here is the start of the trail. Note the public toilets, vending machine, and big parking area. Yamap suggests these are all recent additions, you will see why soon.
The start of the hike has the normal bear sign. These are everywhere. These are not the same as the recent bear sighting signs, which will be temporary and have a date on them.
The trail was very trail like immediately, no driveways / logging roads today... until the top.
Great trail but no real autumn still, even here on the colder side of Japan.
Now to explain the title for today, slow moving bear shield. I had a hiker in front and a group of 3 behind me. They were very slow. Ordinarily I would bound past. Today I decided to adjust my pace to stay in between them for probably 2/3 of the way up. At that stage I saw a couple of guys coming back down, and neither of them had bear bites, so I decided to drop my slow moving shield.
Bear signs everywhere.
There is the view to the top. Not very high at all today.
The trail flattened out near the top and became a bit autmumn-y but I am yet to experience the hypnotic state of leaf colour delirium on this trip.
Very near the top you can get off the path and go up the driveway to the weather station / tv broadcasting antennas. I chose not to, it seems most people do as the path up until this point was very well maintained but from here on became very overgrown. It was only for a few hundred metres.
And here is the top. With a bear sign.
There is a shrine at the top, and not much view down to the coast.
But there was a very good view to the distant central alps. What looks like cloud on the horizon there is actually big mountains. I have climbed the biggest of them previously, Tateyama. You can see the peaks now have a bit of snow.
The driveway down from the summit was actually very nicely yellowed. There were a few people around this area.
There was also a lot of infrastructure littering the summit area.
A few hindered metres down the mountain and there is a new area of development, including this lookout.
View from the lookout down to the sea. Kanazawa is off to the left.
This is why there are toilets and a vending machine at the bottom. It is brand new, and you can drive up here too. This is not a shop or anything, just a rest area that is free and unattended. Today I had it to myself. A lot of people hike up here on weekends from where I started from. For a reason I do not know the structure is called the Ryugu castle.
Inside is all fresh timber, it had a pleasing odour, no hint of urine. Also a vending machine.
Here is the fresh wooded view from the top of Ryugu castle. Now to go down a different way.
First I went down a forest staircase to this lake area. I have seen some stunning autumn pictures online, not today. The lake appears to be called, Oike.
The sun angle made Oike look a bit more appealing from the other end.
On the way down I passed 3 bear traps. No bears inside.
The way down crossed a logging road a few times, which provided some good views such as this.
Last view on the way down. You can see the antennas on the summit in the centre of this shot.
And then it was time to fast walk / jog the 3km back to the station, the train after the one I got does not come for 90 minutes. I made it with 5 minutes to spare. This is Mendan station, it is unattended, and as mentioned above at length, no IC card scanner, scan as you board the train.