The Mt. Rokko Traverse 3 : 六甲全山縦走 3

The third and final section of the Mt. Rokko Traverse had to start late.

We ended section 2 at the Mt. Maya ropeway station. We thought we could easily get back to the same point early next morning. But the lower cable car connecting to the ropeway only starts at 10 am every morning…. 

Even if
I really wanted to start even earlier than the last two days because this last day’s distance should be 20 or more kilometers. But because there was almost no other way to get back to the Mt. Maya ropeway station, we had to end up to start one hour later than usual. 



The first half of today’s route were on the highest ridges of Rokko mountains, which is the very touristy area with car roads and houses. So we were walking either on the car roads or on the mountain trail with very artificial stone steps going up and down almost meaninglessly.

There was even a part named “Agony slope.” Fortunately, going through that part from the west to the east was just downhill so it was not that agony, but when I looked back where we came from, I got why the people in old times called this uphill as Agony slope.



After eating lunch at a cafe, we finally got to the highest summit of the Rokko mountains around 3pm.

And alas, we had not walked even a half of the distance we needed to walk to the goal.
Down from the highest summit, by the car roadside, a new amazingly good bathrooms were recently built. This place used to be just an empty space with a very small mobile bathroom. That was a great pleasant change.



Until this point, we had seen and passed by quite a few other hikers, much more than I expected, considering this day was in the middle of regular weekday. But in the east side of the highest summit, we didn’t see anyone any more.


After walking down along the car road a while, the trail finally went apart from the road and going into the ridge line forests. 
Now, the trail became the real mountain trail. No more artificially built stone steps or kind signposts.

There were really few signposts along the trail, so if we didn’t have GPS tracks, I would have felt really worried if we were going on the right trail. 


Most parts were pretty flat and though the sea of glass bamboos. But when the trail occasionally went downhill, it was like a sand slider. It was really dangerously slippery and we had to hold roots or branches of trees, anything we can hold not to slide down.
We didn’t like the stone steps but no steps at the steep slippery downhill were not what we really wanted either.

I can’t imagine how it would be like for the hikers who walk this entire route in one go. At such walking events, I heard many people have to walk this last part after dark only with their headlights. Even when we still had daylights, these sand slopes were pretty sketchy and scary. 



When we finally reached a temple, that was the end of mountain trail part, it was completely dark. And the real downhill started from here, though the residential area. The height chart of today’s route looks really crazy as the most of down happened this last 3 kilometers. My legs and feet were already beyond exhausted and painful. Still, the paved town road kept going extremely steeply.

I was really really glad that I brought my hiking poles today. 


Today, until we got to the highest summit, there were plenty of bathrooms and vending machines everywhere. But the last 13km, until we reached the residential area, there was absolutely no vending machines nor any ANY place we could get water.

At 19:30, we finally reached Takarazuka station and our hiking on the entire Mt. Rokko all ridges trails came to the goal.