Mount Ryūgohō hike on Akiyoshidai

The other end of the plateau

Akiyoshidai has two trailheads at opposite corners. The Chōjagamori course does the northern hills in an easy hour and a half; this side has the three highest summits, and a lot of up and down between them.

It starts from the car park of Akiyoshidai Family Holiday Village, a campsite on the southern edge of the grassland above the Akiyoshidō cave. The signposted course takes in Ryūgohō, Ohachi and Nishinonishi in about two and a quarter hours. We walked it the other way round and added a long loop north-east across the middle of the plateau, which roughly doubled it.

Up to Mount Nishinonishi, then east

The first half hour climbs through the trees above the village. Then they stop, and the sign for Mount Nishinonishi (西の西山, 398.9 m) is bolted to a limestone block on the skyline.

The path drops east across a run of hollows. They are dolines, where rainwater has eaten into the limestone and drained away underground; several have a wood growing in the bottom.

Three markers stand together on Mount Tsurugi (剣山): a wooden board naming the peak, a stone tablet with a map of the protected area and the date Akiyoshidai was designated a Special Natural Monument, and a granite pillar inscribed by a governor of Yamaguchi.

Instead of turning for home we carried on north-east over bare grass domes, until the loop ran onto the previous day’s track a few hundred metres short of the Chōjagamori car park. Then we turned round.

Back west, and Mount Ohachi

The way back is the long part of the day: grass tracks curving round one hillside after another, the far side of the plateau slow to arrive. The climbing comes here, in twenty- and thirty-metre bites.

Then the ground rises into the densest limestone of either walk. Mount Ohachi (御鉢山, 406 m) is a field of grey pinnacles standing shoulder-high in the grass, packed tight enough that the sign has barely room to stand.

Mount Ryūgohō, 425.5 m

Ten minutes on is the top of Akiyoshidai. Ryūgohō (龍護峰) is marked by a granite pillar with the height cut into it, 四二五・五米, and the summit is grass rather than rock, so the view goes round without interruption. Across the valley the same limestone is being taken out of a hillside in pale terraces.

The way down is quick, back through the rock and then into the trees.

After the hike

The last of the descent runs down through cherry trees, in blossom in early April. We ate at the Log House Canteen back at the holiday village, which stops serving at two; we got in with minutes to spare.