A “little” stroll in the mountains just outside of Tokyo.

Final Stats:

20 miles, 6300 ft

Click for more stats & gps files

If interested, other Japan walks with geo-tagged photos we did here.

During a vacation filled with lots of urban sight-seeing, I had an open day available and gladly choose to explore less densely populated areas of Japan.

Of course Mt Fuji is the first choice of many, but with significant snow cover for a few thousand feet and being more than 2 hrs away, it really wasn’t feasible as a dayhike for me. So I stuck a bit closer to Tokyo.

Mt Takao (Takaosan) is one of the most popular hikes in the area, if not the most. I found mention of it in the Lonely Planet and used that as a base for planning a longer hike. I found additional info on other peaks sharing a ridge, culminating in the high point of Mt Jimba (857 meters). Seemed it would be decently long but not a ton of gain, and when you have a chance to hike in a “Quasi-National Park“, you just do it.

Getting There:

There are two main trains you could take out of Japan. From the Shinjuku, you can take the Keio Line to Takaosan-guchi Station, or take the JR East Chūō Line to Takao then take Keio Line the rest of the way. Right outside the station, you’ll see a big map of the trails up to Takaosan, and likely a bunch of hikers hanging out.

A short walk from the station leads to a lower tram station that you could take all the way up to Takaosan. Just past, the trailheads appear. I chose the Inariyama trail as it was relatively short and the first trail along the walk. The trail starts out steep with built in steps.

Up to Mt Takao, the trail switches between steep and flat sections like this.

I saw a lot of people on the trail, and even more on the summit. This photo doesn’t even do justice to the ~ 200 I saw 10 min later.

I probably said “konnichiwa” at least 50 times, so it was really good practice. Since a lot of people draw out the end, I started saying “konnichiwaaaaaa” and I have to say it felt good. Sadly my vocabulary was probably 10 words overall so I couldn’t do much more!

At this point I had “only” climbed 1400 ft, so I figured the traverse to the other peaks would add on maybe another 2000 more. I headed west and quickly reached the next peak, Koboteshiroyama. Some girl jogged past me wearing Vibram Five Fingers…and a ninja outfit. Some sort of black and yellow crazy thing!

I left to continue onto the next two peaks. This was a nice area with fewer people and more solitude. I really enjoyed the lush green and tall-treed forest here; not bad for being so close to Tokyo. The route seemed relatively flat, but had a lot of ups and downs of a few hundred feet at best. And the parts that actually go up are steep.

After a while, I thought I was getting close to the final peak, Mt Jimba, when I reached the summit of a small bump that I hoped was it merely because I had already done 8 miles and was ready to turn back. I set and ate a to-go sushi set when a few Japanese guys stopped to rest. I “communicated” with them with many hand gestures and a few phrases (I didn’t bring the phrasebook with me) if this was Jimbasan and they indicated it was further. Although disappointed, I was fine with turning around.

Moments before heading off, the ninja trail runner girl hit the peak and took a rest. I asked if she was going to Jimba and she indicated yes. Well damnit, if the ninja trail runner is gonna go to Jimba, so am I!

The peak was about another 1.5 miles further and I made it in good time. Unfortunately the clouds ruined the potentially nice views in all directions from Jimbasan, but at least it had this, whatever it is

Motivated by the ninja and a few other trail runners (and time), I decided to run the way back. This worked out pretty well except for the portion that I went on the wrong trail for a 1/2 mile and had to turn around. I avoided the temptation to just follow the trail down whatever ridge descent it was taking since I may have ended up who knows where. (Posthike analysis indicates this would have taken me to some main road, so probably would have been okay)

Overall, this turned out to be a monster of a hike, about 20 miles and over 6000 ft gain (even without my side excursion). I would highly suggest this hike (or a subset of it) to anyone who has a day to hike while in Tokyo. It’s not the best of Japan, but quite feasible and really nice.

Extended from the first sample I took, here are the photos from the first 4 chapters of John Robinson’s The San Gabriels

Ch 1: Early Peoples
Ch 2: Missions and Ranchos
Ch 3: California’s First Gold Rush
Ch 4: Herders, Horsethieves, and Hunters

Peakbagging continues in northern Thailand…

Final Stats:

8 miles uphill, 2800 ft gain. (12 mile downhill bike ride)

Doi Pui Hike (Chiang Mai, Thailand) Everytrail Link & GPS Files

Walking around the streets of Chiang Mai, one occasionally glances to the west and notices the prominent twin peaks of Doi Suthep and Doi Pui (“Doi” meaning peak). It probably comes as little surprise that I wanted to do a hike to the summit.

While there are many ‘trekking’ opportunities through tourist agencies, I was finding it difficult to obtain any real information about hiking all the way up to the peak from some decent distance below. Frankly, there just isn’t that much tourist demand to do some relatively strenuous hikes so I understood why there wasn’t much information.

Resorting to my usual perusal of the internet for hiking information, I came across one site that discussed a hike to the summit; however, they took over 30 miles to complete it! No thanks!

Luckily, we found a mountain biking brochure and I happened to read through it, and I discovered one biking option that allowed the participants to hike up, and bike down. And the hike would head near the summit of Doi Pui.

So we signed up and the morning of showed up at the office of the mountain biking company, Mountain Biking Chiang Mai. Immediately I was talking to the owner, Adon, into getting us a guide to take us all the way to the summit. And I wanted to start further down than the original plan. It turned out that Adon himself was going to be our guide, and he was immediately questioning whether or not we would be up for such a hike. A little indication the sort of hikes we do normally changed his opinion quickly enough into now thinking about how he would stay with us!

So we hopped in a songthaew and headed up a mountain road. Everyone else was doing the biking and we were deemed the crazy ones because we wanted to go up more than go down.

Perhaps halfway up, Rachel, Adon, and I were dropped off, and began hiking. The hike started on a paved road for a few minutes, but then we headed off onto single track.

Thailand is certainly more lush in vegetation than southern California. And there’s bamboo.

Some creatures made a loud piercing sound, apparently this was a mating call!

After a mile or so we continued along an old road bed. The road bed had moderate grade with a few shorter steeper stretches.

We ran into a few people living up on the mountainside.

And roosters staring me down

After a small lunch, we headed up the NE ridge toward the peak. And here we were treated with some socal grade steepness!

Along the ridge we had some nice views to the west

And then reached the summit of Doi Pui

And to top it off, we took some bikes down (only paved road this time)

And so completed a lovely trip in the countryside of northern Thailand.

Final Stats:

9 miles, 4500 ft gain

Steep!

I did a morning trip in the Verdugo Mountains starting at Brand Park on the southwest end of the small range. This is a good quick drive from downtown LA, and really packs some punch. There are two trails at the beginning, one starting behind to the left the library (more common) and one starting behind to the right. Both are very steep, averaging 1000 ft/mile which includes some flat sections. The trails meet up about halfway and then continue up a firebreak to the Las Flores fireroad. This is basically a good turnaround point; you can also continue on up to the small peak to the east.

On the way down, it is very steep initially. Keep way to the right where you’ll see a small trail separate from the main wide open space. Additionally,you can make a loop out of it and take the Brand Park fire road down, which is much less steep.

I ended up doing this 3 times, although my gps must have shut off before the 3rd ascent. It’s pretty exposed so not great during warm weather, but works well with the ANF closure!

The Hawkins loop hike covered a lot of area that was burned over by a large fire in 2002 known as the Curve Fire. The fire was allegedly started by “candles associated with a ritual involving the use of fire and animal sacrifices” according to the USFS.

Not only did it burn a large amount of land, but I believe closed the 2 and 39 highways for long periods. Additional info.

Final Stats:

Gain: 5400 ft (6300 ft for all excursions)
Distance: 17 miles (18)

Got brush?

Others’ photos and Meetup link here

Well, this one was quite a scouting trip, and exhausting at that. The goal was to try to get up to Bighorn Ridge and we were able to do that, although it definitely required dealing with a good amount of brush.

We set off from Cow Canyon saddle and heading down the fireroad, hitting up the bottom in about 5 miles. We headed up a mile or so up Cattle Canyon until nearing the area deemed as a reasonable starting spot to head up. We met up with HikeUp and discussed potential routes, and figured that there was obvious best way (although there were bad ones). So we began climbing up.

It’s hard for me to illustrate the terrain as I didn’t take a lot of pictures going up. We were simply dealing with a good amount of brush off and on, and I needed to use my hands to clear instead of take pictures. As it turns out, it seemed that in places there was a faint, old use trail of sorts switchbacking up. However, a considerable amount of the path was blocked with brush, usually some combination of yucca, buckthorn, or manzanita.

Open areas were still very steep, but appreciated. The lower half of the ascent seemed to be relatively more covered in brush than the upper, although in both cases we had to resort to crawling around at some points.

It took us probably 3.5 hrs to make it up to Bighorn Ridge, in approximately 2 miles! A solid 1/2 mile per hour clip. Much of this was dealing / breaking route as well as finding best pathways.

At this point, we were planning on heading along the ridge with a goal to get to the bump at ~ 6300 ft. While the rest of the group began to traverse along the eastern edge of the ridge, I checked out the western side and some views of the San Antonio ridge.

There was some faint trails heading both north, south, and west down into Coldwater Canyon. It is too difficult to tell if its from human use or just game trails, but I was intrigued. I continued northernly on this side of the ridge following some faint game trails and eventually climbed back up to the top of the ridge. I had gained distance considerably faster than the rest of the group, who was dealing with more brush and rock bouldering.

We continued on further a bit, but it was already pretty late and we decided to turn around. We didn’t get to the bump I ideally wanted to get to, but we had seen a decent portion of the ridge. The portion ahead still had considerable brush, but I think doable.

At this point we turned around and headed back. The descent took about 1/2 the time of the ascent, given we knew our path better & and had broken trail.

As for estimating the rest of the ridge, I would imagine it would be slow going up to some altitude (maybe 7500 ft?) where the brush would clear up, and from there it would be just elevation gain. I think this would be a big undertaking, but doable as a dayhike. I think exploring this portion now will make the ascent to the ridge much quicker next time as long as I remember the path, which I should.