The first thing was to get out there, since I don't have a car and the trailhead is fairly distant. Luckily there's a bus that goes out there during climbing season, but it's only by appointment. It's hard enough to communicate in person, so I really wasn't looking forward to trying to make myself understood over the phone, but luckily I realized that the bus was run by the same company that runs the community bus here in town and has their office right on my way to work, so instead of calling I just stopped in and made my appointment for it. It was $30 each way for the 40 minute trip, which seemed pretty steep, but without a car it was the only alternative.
So the bus left at 6:20 in the morning, so I had to get up at 5:30 to have a quick breakfast and catch it. It would arrive at 7 and then the return bus would leave at 4:20, so I had a little over nine hours to make the hike up and down the mountain. What I could find online said to plan on 8-10 hours, but I figured I could make it near the faster end of that estimate, so I just had to watch the clock to see where I was at the halfway point of 11:30.
I saved a couple pictures with trail maps and time estimates on my phone, as well as a description of the hike in English saying which way to go at which junctions, and took a 2L bottle of water and a couple of rice balls for lunch. It was supposed to be a warm day, and I'd be hiking the whole time, so I wore jeans to protect against ground plants or bugs or whatever, but just wore a t-shirt. I thought about bringing my fleece, but I figured it would be too warm to actually use, and just more weight to carry, so I didn't bring it. [Foreshadowing.]
The bus was just a shuttle van, but there were six other people taking it, so it was full up. The ride up was uneventful and we got dropped off at the middle of the small trailhead complex. There was some parking lots, a building with bathrooms, a lodge for people staying overnight, and a little restaurant. It took a minute to find the actual trail, but then I was off.
There were quite a few people on the trail already, even that early in the morning. I was trying to get up as fast as possible so I could make sure I had plenty of time to finish and make it back for the bus, so I was passing a lot of people. Most of the people on the trail were older people and couples of various ages, but a couple small families too. Pretty much everyone was decked out in almost identical gear: a floppy hiking hat, a windbreaker type jacket, and a hiking rod or two. About half the people had bear bells on their backpacks, because:
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| It says "Bear Warning". |
Oh yeah, and occasionally just a ladder next to a cliff:
The scenery was a lot like the Andes too, mostly just low grass, but becoming more stony and volcano-like further on:
Most of these pictures were actually taken on the way down. Only about an hour after starting off it was already getting foggy, because I was literally hiking up into the clouds. About halfway through there was supposed to be a nice lake in a little valley off the side of the trail, but the fog was too thick to see it on either the way up or down. And it did get thick as I got further up. It was condensing on my ponytail, and I had to wipe off my glasses every fifteen minutes or so because they had gotten coated with so much mist.
At this point I was realizing that I probably should have brought that jacket after all, since not only was it a bit cooler on the mountain than it had been at sea level, but the foggy mist especially didn't help either. But even though my skin was getting cold at times, I was generating plenty of heat from the actual hiking, so I wasn't really cold at all for most of the hike. As I got further up where it was colder, there were plenty of people asking me whether I was cold though. (Samukunai?) Up on the ridges there were some really strong winds for a few minutes, so those combined with the fog were the only times that I was actually cold. And I guess it takes a certain temperature to keep this thing frozen here:
So even though I had a copy of a trail map and some instructions, I ended up taking a wrong turn anyway and going around the loop trail in the opposite direction that I wanted. Not a big deal, except that I would be reaching the summit at the end of it rather than the beginning of it, so I wouldn't be able to judge the time at the summit and skip the loop if I didn't have enough time. But I had made excellent time going up, I was already a full hour ahead of the estimate from online, so I figured I was okay.
There wasn't much to see because of the fog, so the only remarkable part was when I got over to the false summit. It was basically just a rocky flattish area like the top of a rocky hill, and there were little Buddhist altars or whatever all over the top of it. It had a lot of spots to sit and rest, so there were a lot of people here doing just that and eating a snack or whatever. I didn't hang around though and continued on through towards the true summit.
I took this on the way down; I actually approached it from on the opposite side. The two small rock piles aren't directly on top of the hill like they look in this picture, but some ways off behind it. That hill is actually pretty flat on top and there's a hut to sleep over and some bathrooms (and not with flush toilets either), but that's it. But I only got to that point after coming down from the summit.
Gradually the path had been getting steeper for the last hour or so and since it had become more like constant climbing rather than just walking up an incline I had been getting more tired, so it was taking more conscious effort to step from rock to rock rather than just hopping around like I had been earlier on. The grass had given way to just whatever scrubby pine bushes could grow out from between the rocks, and eventually those went away too. The final climb was literally just a rock pile, and it was pretty crazy:
The sort of thing where one misstep has you at least tumbling a few dozen feet down a rockpile, and at worst just plain off the side of the mountain. But there were some nice messages on the way up at least:
And one of those rock piles with space for about six people on top was just a bit taller than all the others, and that was the the summit:
It was just starting to clear up a little at this point, the sun had actually broken through for the first time just as I was on the summit, but it was still foggy for most of the time. I had hit the summit at about 11 and once I got down from it and got to the hut area I rested for about half an hour and ate my lunch, so once I started off to head back down it was 11:30, which was exactly halfway through the nine hours that I had to complete the hike, and that was after already completing the loop trail, so I had plenty of time to get back down without missing my bus.
It was the same route down as up, but just a tad clearer so I could take some better pictures (the ones above). The main difference was that now I was exhausted, and my knees were killing me. But I still made good time down and got there about 2:30. Near the bottom this one guy got to talking to me, so we chatted on and off the the last 45 minutes or so. It was funny because the people I'd talk to would always ask where I was coming from or where I was staying in Japan, and I'd tell them Kisakata, and they'd assume I had misunderstood and that was just where I had started the hike from, so they were always surprised to learn that I was actually living there.
The valley next to the trailhead looked nicer in the afternoon than it had in the morning too:
So then I just read some Sherlock Holmes on my phone until the bus came. So here's what you need to get to the summit of Chokai: good knees, good balance, water, and food. And here's what you should bring besides, but don't absolutely need: a jacket and a hiking stick.
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