Hiking Mount Bunagatake

Today, my buddy Alex and I woke up extra early to go hike Mount Bunagatake in Shiga, which is fairly close to Kyoto, just a little north east. We invited our friends Preston and Ethan, but unfortunately they didn't want to wake up. We had researched that the hike was going to be fairly difficult and about 6:30 long so we brought lots of water and food. We also were prepared to be hiking in some rain so this time I brought my jacket and some warmer clothes as well.

Riding the train to our station provided some great views of the countryside. We missed the bus that ran from the station to the trailhead, so we had to walk about 40 minutes through the town, which we didn't mind because we got to take in the sights of the country.

The hike started out pretty easy, but we started hiking next to a small creek and it got very steep. The trail sometimes would almost disappear and we had to watch for red flags on trees, and sometimes arrows painted on rocks to find our way. There were some very difficult sections of climbing up rocks and boulders as well. The trail evened out as we neared the summit however, and it was slightly raining by the time we approached the peak.

Initially when we made it to the top, we couldn't see anything because we were inside of a cloud. We sat down and started eating lunch, and about five minutes later, the clouds cleared up and gave us a crazy view of the surrounding valleys. We took our time to munch, and decided to get moving when we spotted a very big and very dark cloud headed our way. We figured it was best to get back below the trees in case it started raining, especially since the cloud looked like it might have some thunder.

We took a different way down which was much easier than what we went through on the way up. Which was great, because I didn't want to have to scale those rocks downwards after it had rained. We made it back to the station exhausted, and napped a little on our way back to Kyoto. As some bonus content, enjoy a video of the rehearsal I had for my Green Day band this past Saturday!