(祖母山) Mt. Sobo Hike

I started writing this blog post for Mt. Sobo logistics... and it ended up being Takachiho Gorge + Mt. Sobo Hike! Haha. Oh well. Why not both?

Budget: JPY11,840 (~USD112)

JPY2,410. Bus, Kumamoto to Takachiho Bus Center.
JPY5,000. Accommodations at Takachiho Gorge.
JPY3,000. Taxi, Takachiho Gorge to Kitatani Trailhead (JPY6,000ish taxi, divided by 2)
JPY300. Bus, Obira-kouzan trailhead to Ogata Station.
JPY1,130. Train, Ogata Station to Oita Station.

Hike Date / Difficulty (Elevation: 1,756m / 5,761ft)

When to Go
Anytime during the year! The bus runs throughout the year too, except for New Year's.

Special Notes

Weather forecast. English / Japanese. English more detailed, Japanese more accurate.
Trailheads.

Obira-kouzan (尾平鉱山). There's a bus direct (JPY300 one way) from Ogata Station (緒方駅), which comes once in the morning and in the afternoon for weekends. Uebata (上畑) is another trailhead.

The bus schedule is in this website. The website changes everytime they update it, so if the link doesn't work, look for "コミュニティバス" at the left bar.
Click the PDF link with column "時刻表" (Schedule) , row "清川町・緒方町". Go to be bottom of the PDF, you should see the screenshot below.

Kamihara-tozanguchi (神原登山口). Google maps pin. No public transportation, if via taxi, it'll take about 45 minutes, JPY6,500 from Ogata Station (緒方駅). It's 26.1kms, if you wish to walk.
Kitatani (北谷登山口). Google maps pin. The shortest way up, but no public transportation access. Part of the road is under construction as of December 2020, but there's an alternative road, albeit a rough road. But plenty of cars drive through it, so no worries.

If via taxi, it'll take about 38 minutes, 22 kms from Takachiho Gorge. Takachiho Gorge is gorgeous (and famous), so definitely do both if possible.

Trip with Takachiho. If to be done with Takachiho Gorge, here's the bus schedule from Kumamoto Station to Takachiho Bus Center.

From Takachiho Bus Center, it is approximately 30 minutes to walk to Takachiho Gorge.
A taxi ride will be needed to go from Takachiho Gorge to Kitatani trailhead (北谷登山口).

Itinerary - via Kitatani (北谷登山口)

Actual Log - via Kitatani (北谷登山口)

07:07am. Start driving from Beppu to 北谷 trailhead.
09:22am. We got into the rough road part of the drive, but this is likely because part of the road was still under construction. But there were plenty of signs pointing to 北谷登山口.
09:47am. Arrived at Kitatani Trailhead (北谷登山口). Started the hike. There were plenty of signs pointing to the summit (祖母山頂).
09:53am. River crossing - well, it's not really we just have to skip some rocks. The path was initially flat, and then soon enough we started doing a rather steep ascent.
10:53am. Passed through a cave, where we took some time to peek into.
12:00pm. Passed through the... 5 meter (?) aluminum ladder. Around this time the path started getting icy, and soon enough we decided to put our spikes on.
12:38pm. Arrived at the summit! Yey! The summit was quite spacious.
01:10pm. Started our descent. We retraced our steps about 10, 15 meters from the summit marker, and turned right, following the directions to 国観峠, or when available, 北谷登山口. The descent was initially steep and icy/snowy, but soon flattened out and the rest of the descent was a pretty gradual one. There were a couple of turns, but the turns were well marked in Japanese (so keep track of the Japanese characters).
03:08pm. Back at trailhead.

Our day starts with the sunrise.

Close to the trailhead, we had to cross the river.

The rather flat start of the hike.

Very winter-y.

The ladder to the cave.

Taking a peek at the cave.

This was a steep section if I remember correctly.

Just some random bone we saw. A deer's?

This was not scary at all, but this was the start of the snowy section of the hike.

Let's call it icy.

The summit!

Heading back, here's the fork. We took the right one.

Snowy/icy trail down.

Most of the trail is not on the gulley, but on a trail next to it. In this case, the trail was on the left.

A big flat spot.

The path down was relatively flat.

Looks like Tokyo trails to me. Soon enough we were back down.

The Adventure Log.