Saturday , April 28,2007 Weather will be Sunny to Cloudy with a possibility of rain in the evening. Indeed, it was a great day for hiking. The goal for the day was to hike from Hankyu Ashiyagawa Station to Arima Onsen passing by Mt. Rokko. I heard from someone that the hike would take about 3 hours. Hiramatsu-san was hesitant and so she went on to search for more information. And yes we were mistaken, it took us 6 hours ( estimated was actually 5 hours ). Not bad with all the stops and picture taking, we did great :D. 9km of uphill and 4km of downhill it was exhausting.

 

 

In Ashiyaga station, everybody was going by bus to the Rokko Rock Garden. We decided to walk all the way up there, passing the richs’ district of Ashiya. We did not even have any warm-ups

In the entrance to the rock garden, we filled up a form or rather Hiramatsu-san and Naoko-san filled up the form for us. It was a prevention if ever we got lost in the mountain . But we went home the other way, are we not supposed to take that paper back? Does that mean, we are already lost?

And so the climb begins. This is still the easy part of the trail. It was an amazing trail. But everybody did great.

After about an hour, we reached about half way ? . From this point on it would another 1.5 hours to the peak of Mt. Rokko.

Along the way to the top, we got lost. Yes LOST. We made a wrong turn. But we found this beatiful area, who cares if we made the wrong turn :D.

We turn back, and found the area where we were supposed to turn. Everybody was like talking and nobody was taking note of the path . I hate this part of the climb. Basically the trail was turned into a stairs, for easier climb but its kinda boring so I can feel myself getting tired, not unlike the rock climbing part, now that was really great

From the top of Mt. Rokko, it would take another 1.5 hours, 4km downhill walk to Arima Onsen.Though our feet were almost dead, with just the thought of soaking into the onsen, made everyone move faster.

Our exit ( in the middle ). Along the way, we found a sign that said shortcut to arima and we took it it. And we made our exit at the back of the temple. The old lady was very surprised, when out of nowhere seven beautiful goddesses came down from the mountain. Did she thought were from Mt. Olympus? Yeah, she was really surprised. It was the first time she know that there is a path at the back of the temple. Now its time for ONSEN.. ONSEN.. ONSEN…

 6hrs. 13Km.. we made it .

and for dinner –>  

 

 

 

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