Mt. Sakata in Suzaka

Sometimes in the morning I ride on a bike and take a stroll around the town. This morning in the weekend, I happened to go for another road which is new to me.

About half year ago I have found an article which showed this local mountain, Mt. Sakata in my city, Suzaka. The altitude of this mountain is not so high, less than 900m. I would climb it unless I had a bile. I decided to go to the place where I would taka a rest and would see some good view.

After running around the foot of the mountain, I found a parking place which had some space for a couple of cars. I left my bike there. It seemed to be close to the arbor, or Azumaya. I was surprised to see there were a lot of chestnut trees.

It took only five minutes from the parking place to the Azumaya. The view from there was very nice and surprised me a lot. I saw towns in Suzaka and Nagano city and Mt. IIzuna and some next ranges of mountains from there. How nice! I found such a nice place very near my usual course of riding a bike.

I enjoyed the view there and took some rest there. On my way back to my bike I picked up handsfull of chestnuts and I put them into my pockets of the pants.

Mt. Togakushi 1,911m

QUICK DECISION Last sunday I went to Mt. Togakushi with my friend, Ito san. The weather forecast had been telling that it would be rainy or cloudy this weekend but when I checked it out the day before I found it might be much better than the previous forecast. The weekly weather forecast would be changing sometimes. So we made a quick decision to climb Mt. Togakushi the day before.

RANCH TO OKUSHA I was very sorry that I got up an hour later than planned. Picked him up at the bus stop near his home and left for Togakushi. Mt. Togakushi has two main entrance, one is Togakushi Okusha and the other is Togakushi cow ranch. As it would be helpful later, we dropped a car at the side of the gate of the ranch and walked through the camping site to Okusha for about 40 min.

We visited Okusha and prayed for safe and got started to climb it up. Soon we met a steep hill and cleared it then there appeard some of the dangerous points, called Chain spots. We took some breaks on our way to the most dangerous spot, Arino-Towatari.

ARINO-TOWATARI I have ever heard of it and it was true that it is the most dangerous, scary and challenging. Ito san had climbed this mountain several times so far so he was very good to pass it by. I followed him a dozen minutes behind. The weather was so fine that we could see the bottom of the cliffs in the both sides of the ridge as well as beutiful sceneries around the mountains. I tried not to look down the hill and walked a bit by bit like a waddling baby. It took more than 20 minutes untill I completed it. Then I felt very fine and knew I conquered it at last.

Some people say this spot is one of the most challenging spots in the mountains including Nothern Alps. I think so, too.

We reached Happou-Nirami and took a break. We enjoyed the amazing view there and saw Mt. Asama, Azumaya, Shiga ranges, Sekita ranges and Kurohime. It was a nice spot to take a picture.

SUMMIT TO SHELTER After 10 min walk we saw the summit of Mt. Togakushi and passed it by without any break because it doesn't have a peak and so not so good point. We took a quick lunch time on the way and walked on the long lined ridge for the north direction. There was a point of triangulation where it seemed to be the summit of Mt. Kuzuryu. About two hours later than we left Happo-Nirami, we got to Ichi-fudo evacuation shelter. We met a dozen people taking breaks there. It was a good shelter to take a rest.

KORI SHIMIZU SPRING You can go for Mt. Takatsuma from the location but we went down along the Oobora-zawa, a small river for the cow ranch we parked our car. After 10 minute walk we found a very nice and cold spring, called as Koori-shimizu. You can drink water there and it is so cold that you could freeze beer can.

From Ichi-fudo to the cow ranch it took more than an hour and there were several chain spots on the way.

SOBA SOFT CREAM Finally we got down to the cow ranch and saw a lot of cows as well as a lot of people walking and sight-seeing cows. Ito san baught me a soft cream and it was great for my exhausted stomach.

I think I would have stopped and gone back in the front of Arino-towatari. I appreciated Ito san inpired me a lot to proceed. It was a six hours and a half course and we left there around 3 pm for Nagano and had a drinking party we had planned.

Mt. Togakushi is one of Hokushin-Gogaku. But this one is relatively tough to climb notably on the most scary chain spot as well as Mt. Myoko. Finally I have climbed the four mountains of Hokushin-Gogaku and the rest is Mt. Myoko. I am now planning to climb it in this season.

The Chikuma river

Recently I have got a new machine. It's a bicycle. The kind of cross-bike, like a mountain bike. Amazingly, it has passed just 20 years since I had been using a bicycle everyday when I was a high school student.

This sunday afternoon I decided to take a wandering by my bike somewhere. I like running along the river so I chosed a course along Chikuma river for Obuse.

At first I left home for the Murayama bridge, which is one of the two bridges between Suzaka and Nagano city. It took just 10 minutes.

Then, after I got there, the direction was for the south. Some rivers in Japan are well maintenanced as there are roads on the riversides. It's partly true for the Chikuma but somewhere I often met unpaved parts of roads. My bike isn't appropriate to run on such roads. I had to draw it along me and walk.

In Obuse, it was very good roads, of course paved, and so that I didn't take even a short walk with my bike. I saw an athlete of wheelchair marathon running in high speed. I found a series of owner-system cherry trees along the road with some signboad including the owner names on them. You can enjoy beutiful cherry blossoms in April there.

My aim had been Obuse when I started but I changed my mind there. I made up my mind to go to the Tategahana bridge in Nakano city and go over it and come back along the opposite riverside. It took about an hour by the time I got there. It may sound very long but it's because I took a couple of rests on the way.

Soon after I crossed the bridge I had to go down the steps to the riverside. There was a small JR station named Tategahana. A few kilo meters ahead I ran together with a lot of cars running on R18 and then I could come back to the riverside road. There I could enjoy seeing the view of many mountains around the towns including Mt. IIzuna, Neko-dake, Karita-san, Shiga highland and Kosha-san. Those are ones I ever climbed so far. I recorded a movie panning from IIzuna to Kosha-san here. It was rather simple road this side so I ran and ran along.

By the time I got to the sleeve of the Murayama bridge it has been about two hours since the starting. At last I found lots of things and views I have never met and never choiced so far driving a car. This short trip told me about lots of things. I felt somewhat tired when I got home but it was kind of comfy. I recommend this course if you want to run near Nagano city.