lost or what?

It is relatively easy to get here. From Shinjuku take the Odakyu line to Shibusawa and change to a bus. The bus normally meets the train, my train was 5 minutes late so I had to wait 30 minutes for the next bus, along with the other hikers who missed the same bus which I presume drove off empty. It takes nearly 2 hours from Tokyo though, so factor that in!

Stay on the bus until the last stop, about 15 minutes. It does not really stop anywhere else. This stop is called Okura if you want to find it on a map.

A bear was sighted in September.

The bridge is normally not part of the hike, but it is today! I will take a different route up that avoids other people.

Bridge from afar. I forget the name of the trail, all the trails here have names, however you follow the stream on a forest road for a while.

This is actually a public road. People drive up here to collect spring water. No cars came but I saw a couple parked.

Quasi national park is best national park.

Early low down view of my eventual destination of Tonodake.

Abandoned spooky camp spot. There were a few.

This one is somewhat active. There were a couple of camper 4wd's parked nearby. This is the end of the road, all hiking trail from this point.

The cars I mentioned. Fantastic weather, I was confident of seeing Fuji...

Not really any Autumn colours yet.

But it was still very nice. I saw no other people until I got up to the ridge.

People complain this trail is hard to follow. Nonsense. It is somewhat under developed compared to the main trail, but compared to many other hikes I have done, it is a well marked highway.

Starting to get cloudy.

Nice scenery all to myself. No bears, but I did come face to face with a deer. I nearly walked head long into him before I realised it was a deer.

The view was getting good.

The view was really good, with excellent clouds.

Once I joined the main ridge there was a decent amount of other people.

The trail was also much more developed along the top.

Nice portrait orientation version of the view.

Looks a bit spooky once I got closer to the clouds.

That ridge going around to the right in the middle of the screen is the one I had come up.

Tonodake summit. On weekends it has hundreds of people. You can camp here too. About 10 people today.

The camping spot. It has toilets and solar cells.

Now it is time for a lot more view appreciation.

My head got in the way of the view.

Around there is Tanzawa, in the cloud.

Same view shot as before, alternate version to remind you of the view.

It appears as though I am kind of in the clouds.

Now it was time to descend and do some low bamboo appreciation.

But first more view.

I ran down the tracks pretending I was a train. I made the noises too.

I like low bamboo.

Down there somewhere is my bus stop.

Sun streaming through cloud.

This camping spot also appears to still be active.

Still a long way to go.

Back into the dark forest, complete with bear bait ahead of me.

New parts of the wooden trail. Not really needed except for the huge number of people that use this trail on weekends cause massive erosion.

This spot operates as a cafe on weekends.

I enjoyed running on the smoother parts of the trail.

Time to follow the hose. There are a lot of hoses on Japanese mountains.

Fern country.

Last bit of view. I am not even sure if that is my mountain in the middle or not.

The trail exits into farm land, but its only a few hundred metres back to the bus stop and the cool bridge.

Time for the stance, in my running tights and blood red running t-shirt. Yeah. Leeches can't get through my tights.

I had to wait 20 minutes for the bus, so bonus bridge shot it is.
It is now quite late and I have not had dinner. I will stay local this evening, so don't expect many photos later!