2013-05-02　大山

Short hike to Oyama via minor route.

The hike starts at Hinata Yakushi bus stop. To get there get on bus 20 at Isehara station (bus stop 3, North exit) the times are indicated on maps.google.
The very beginning is a path leading to the temple with paved road, stairs, temple gate and relatively slippery rocky ground.

Then the trail connects to the Hinatasan shuhen course (which is not shown on the 山と高原 map) which is a pretty wide trail. Some low wooden stairs come next and soon we enter the Ume no ki ridge. There are very few signs except the ones warning the very few hikers, who venture on this side of the mountain, off the dead-ends.

The Ume no ki ridge in spite of not being on the standard hiking map and having to sign is pretty easy to follow and there are no particular dangerous spots to mention.
It is never extremely steep although the GPS data indicated slopes exceeding 40 degrees. On this trail there was no other human being, nor tracks but still it didn't feel like an abandoned trail like the ones there are in Kobe.

The ridge trail connects to the very crowded Ooyama sanmine jusou trail about 2km from the summit, a rope seems to indicate that Ume no Ki ridge is a closed trail or a dead-end and naturally no signs are to be seen at the intersection with the main trail. Up to the summit there are many stairs and as many hikers as I expected (roughly 200).

From Ooyama I wasted a bit of time trying to find the minor ridge trail going West: in Japanese it's called 諸戸尾根ルート and this one also is only shown on Higashi Tanzawa detailed map. For the 1.8 km to the state road there is absolutely no sign and the entrance of the trail is blocked by a latticed door and a fence as if to indicate this is not a good idea to venture on the other side of the mountain. Actually the trail turned out to be very good (naturally no stairs) and easy to follow. At the very end there is a nice little stream and then it connects to road 70 where many cyclists and bikers are going up to Yabitsu pass.

Under the rain I failed to find the entrance to Yabitsu old trail and just followed the road to Yabitsu pass.

Since the next bus from the pass was more than an hour later, I went on towards 蓑毛 bus stop (3.4 km). The slope is gentle the whole way and there are few rocks and no dangerous parts on this trail so the whole thing can be done running, even with a 30L backpack and standard hiking shoes.

Overall a nice short hike, probably impossible to do without GPS.

More pictures here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/d84scfucift2h33/FSvi9XfBI8