Passing by Ago Ohashi Bridge on the Scenic Gonokawa River

I continue upriver towards the source...... 

Carrying on up the right/East bank of the Gonokawa River after leaving the red Kurihara Bridge

The former Sanko Line railway runs on this bank. Whereas some bridges have been dismantled, mostly in urban areas, here the small bridge remains...

Roadside altars are commonplace everywhere in Japan.... this one is quite substantial.... as usual someone locally keeps the  flowers replaced....

Quite a few thatched houses with metal covering the thatch...

The last time I walked by here the little gas station was still in business....

Up ahead, the Ago Ohashi Bridge comes into view....

It is a two-truss type...

Built in 1954, it is one of the oldest existant bridges across the Gonokawa...

for a purely stone type, this altar is quite big....

For the first 40k going up river, the river and landscape is quite similar and it can be hard to differentiate where you are from a photo...

Up ahead the top of Mount Sanbe. The highest point in Shimane and a volcano was last active about 4,000 years ago.

The river continues to head towards it for about 4 more kilometers before doing a 180 turn and heading away from it....

The previous post in this series was on the Kurihara Bridge

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Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage Day 3

Iwami Kannon

Sunday 16th December 2012, and I begin my third day walking the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage with Mount Sanbe silhouetted  inland. Today I will walk from Shizuma down the coast and end at Nima.

There was one of the pilgrimage temples and lots of shrines.  A few mountain roads and a few villages and a nice stretch of beach to walk.

A great day for surfing, I guess,.... we get good surf mostly in the winter it seems.

A couple of the shrines are very intriguing and tell the story of the arrival of Susano from the Korean peninsula. Almost completely ignored in most renditions of the myths and early history of Japan, the two shrines were instrumental in sending me on the search for Susano stories...

Ascending Sanbesan

Towards the end of the first day of my walk along the Iwami 33 Kannon Pilgrimage I was close to the base of Mount Sanbe. It had taken me all day to walk more than 20k from Oda City and had climbed about 500 meters. My plan was to meet a friend on top of Sanbe to spend the night, so another 600 meters of climbing to go.

I was going up by the most travelled trail on the northern slope. Since leaving Oda there had been no stores, convenient or otherwise, but in the recreation area at the base of the mountain was a Sanbe Burger. The only Sanbe Burger on the planet I believe. Late on a Friday afternoon in early November I was the only customer. After filling my belly I headed off with some trepidation. I don't like climbing! I'd been walking all day and was tired, but to get from a to b in Japan you are going to have to climb some.

At 500 meters plus there was still a lot of green, but the color change was starting.

Higher still, most of the green had gone, save for the moss.

Higher still and the light was fading, and then suddenly I was on top. I was really surprised. It was easier than I had expected. Maybe I have gotten better at pacing myself. I certainly haven't gotten any younger. A couple of minutes after reaching the summit young Wes appeared having come up by a different trail.

My posts on the sunset and the next days sunrise can be found below this post.

Wes's account can be found here.

Sanbe Dam

The second temple on the Iwami 33 Kannon pilgrimage (actually the first "extra" temple) is located on the mountainside above Sanbe Dam. Thats Mount Sanbe behind.

Seeing how aged the concrete is I was surprised to learn that the dam was not finished until 1996, although construction started in 1980.

The dam is a little over 54 meters high and 140 meters wide at its crest and is composed of 110,000 cubic meters of rock and concrete. Ostensibly the purpose of the dam is flood control and to supply water to Oda City, but its real purpose is to funnel money to construction companies.

The small reservoir has a capacity of 7,000,000 cubic meters of water.

Sunset on Sanbe

On Thursday I started walking the Iwami 33 Kannon pilgrimage. The second and third temples lie around the base of Mount Sanbe (1126m) so I decided to make the detour and climb to the top as it had been some years since I was up there. I started out in Oda just slightly above sea level and the route took me along the river directly towards Sanbe some 20k distant.

It was a mostly overcast and showery day and I got to the top about 4:30 and off to the west the clouds cracked open to reveal a splash of color....

About 2 minutes later Wes of Hiking in Japan arrived at the top and we took a few photos before the clouds closed and settled on the mountain. 2 minutes after that it started to rain and kept up all night long becoming sleet and snow at times. Fortunately there was a hut to take shelter in....

The view from Sanbe

Sanbe San is the name given to the highest point in Shimane, a cluster of 7 peaks.

!,126 meters above sea level, I have only climbed it one time.

Most people go up it on the trail on the north side but I went up a barely used trail on the south side.

As you would expect there are some great views once you get out of the trees.

In the distance the Shimane Hanto with Izumo Taisha at its base.

According to the Kunibiki myth the peninsular was dragged from Sila and held to the land of izumo by a rope that is now the beach you can just see. The other end of the peninsular was tied by a rope to Daisen in Tottori.

A huge caldera.

Sanbe San

This is the draincover for the town of Oda, a fairly nondescript town close to the border between Iwami and Izumo. The mountains in the background are known as Sanbesan, and are the highest in Shimane at 1,126 m above sea level.

Oda does not have much to see for tourists, and is pretty much just the rail access point for visitors to the nearby World Heritage site of Iwami Ginzan, but I did wander around last fall hunting the fall colors.

This view of Sanbesan is from near my house, and must be about 25k distant as the crow flies. I took the photo on a winter walk up Maruyama.

On the lower slopes. Sanbesan is actually a cluster of 7 volcanoes, and the highest one is named Osanbesan. We were on our way to visit the Buried Forest Museum, actually a fascinating place where you can go below ground and see 4,000 year old trees that were buried in a major eruption.

This is on the south side, and its where I slept out before climbing to the top early the next morning. I had walked two days from my house to get here. One of these days I will write up that walk :)