I was planning to go to Kinpusan (金峰山) today, but the weather forecast announces rain in Yamanashi (山梨県) and Nagano (長野県) prefectures but just clouds in Tōkyō. So I changed my plans and went back hiking (should better say trail running) in the southern part of Okutama (奥多摩) were I barely go. I decided to run between Okutama lake (奥多摩湖) and Mount Mitake (御岳山) throught Gozenyama (御前山), Nokogiriyama (鋸山), Ootakesan (大岳山) and Nabewariyama (鍋割山).

To be honest, outside the facts that the footpath goes up and down, I had more the feeling to be hiking in the woods than in the mountains. Even on top of the various summits, the view is most of the time limited to a small window between the trees. On the other side the good thing is the change of vegetation. If Okutama‘s north area is often a monotonous japan cryptomeria tree forest (or sugi, cryptomeria japonica), today’s itinerary (except Mitake area) was mostly in broad leaved tree forest.

The richer vegetation made me expect to see some nice flowers. But unfortunately while running I didn’t had much time to look around for flowers. Here are pictures of the few I found on my way:

One of the interest of this hike is Mitakesan shrine visit. Despite the rain (which proved weather forecast to be wrong) and the tiredness after 4 hours of running, I still took time to visit it. Maybe its the combination of both tiredness and rain (which might have discourage tourists) which created such an atmosphere but I found this shrine on top of Mount Mitake summit very calm and peaceful. It was hard to motivate myself to walk down the mountain to the train station instead of taking a rest in one of the rest place before taking the cable-car down…

Maps

There’s only one map necessary for this hike:
1/25000地形図、奥多摩湖、東京14号-3、 NI-54-25-14-3 (Okutama-ko, Tōkyō 14-3, NI-54-25-14-3)
1/25000地形図、武蔵御岳、東京14号-1、 NI-54-25-14-1 (Musashimitake, Tōkyō 14-3, NI-54-25-14-1)

GPX file GPS: okutama-lake-mitake.gpx . Read the disclaimer before using the GPX files.

Facts about Mitakesan

You will find all the information (mountain lodges, access, security…) regarding the Mitakesan area in this article.