Mitake with its ropeway is probably “the” hiking destination in Tokyo. It’s accessible, not particularly high and you still get beautiful views. Oh, and crowds. Of course crowds.

I once again went on the trail with 20kg extra weight in my pack, but unlike Amagi, this route had plenty of altitude difference, so it tired me a lot more. Alas a few days before the glass cover of my phone’s camera cracked, which made taking good pictures pretty much impossible. Bear with me.

I started from the bottom of the ropeway, first curving up the mountain using the road with the numbered, giant cedars. (Of course I didn’t take the ropeway.) I feel sorry for the postman who has to deliver mail to the top… (Yes that actually happens.) It’s not a long climb though – I was at the summit shrine of Mt Mitake in an hour and a half. That’s worse than the “standard time” of the route, which shows how much extra weight matters on a steeper hike.

From there it’s a more trail-y trail, with much less people too (still quite many though). Mt Mitake is only halfway up Mt Otake though, both in distance and in altitude. It took another two hours or so to get to the summit of Mt Otake. The weather was clear, so I got a nice clear view of Mt Fuji too.

From there the route was mostly going down, except for one short (but very steep) climb up to Mt Nokogiri (one of the many Mt Nokogiris in Japan). By the time I got down to Okutama, I was very exhausted. It was an almost-8 hours hike with over 1800m of total ascent. In retrospect, it would’ve been much more enjoyable if I dumped half my extra weight (10l of water) at the highest point, but I didn’t…