Mt Ontake - 御嶽山

During the last days of the Golden Week, some friends and I went to climb the Mt Ontake, the second highest volcano in Japan at 3,067 m.

Here is a video that I have made about our legendary adventure hehe. Climbing Mt Ontake was not an easy job.

From Nagoya we took a train (JR Chuuou line) to Kiso-Fukushima (木曽ー福島), at the east of the mountain. From Kiso-Fukushima there is a bus to Tanohara (田ノ原), which is the starting of the route, but only during the climbing season (Jul 16 to Aug 20). So instead we took another available bus from Kiso-Fukushima that left us close enough to start hitch-hiking with a sign saying Nakanoyu (中の湯) which is another way to start the route (although it ended up being not so clear as there are several places with that name, so maybe its better to put Tanohara). We were lucky and some nice Japanese people took us to the parking where the route is supposed to start.

We reached the peak around 6 when it was close to start getting dark. Although we carried tents, we found the toilets of a mountain hut open and we decided to spend the night in them! (no jokes!). There was more snow than what we expected and the hike was quite slippery at times.

The next day we went on the route until Nigorigo Onsen (濁河温泉) where we enjoyed a very relaxing time after the hike. Then we had to do hitch-hiking once again because although there is supposed to be a bus, it was not working on that day as well. Although it took us more time to get picked up finally we got lucky and a Japanese guy, actually the owner of the Onsen, was nice to us and took us to the train station in Hida-Osaka (飛騨小坂) where we took the JR Takayama line to go to Nagoya.

There is information about the hike in the book Hiking in Japan, Lonely Planet. Also I suggest to get a hiking map (Shonbunsha Yama-to-Kougen map 1:40000, no40, which on the back has the route to Ontake on a 1:20000 close-up).

Update: Check out Tyler&Alyssa's blog describing a similar hike but with much more details! :)