As much planning goes into the hike as the hike itself. As saying goes, infantry wins battles, logistics wins wars. This is doubly true since I do most of my hikes by public transport.

However, before even deciding how to get to a mountain, I have to decide where I want to go. I divide my hikes into the following categories:

  • Objectives (e.g. 100 famous mountains in Japan)
  • Fun (e.g. Going somewhere with friends)
  • Training (e.g. Places that are usually near and I can easily go just to get out there)

Weather

As someone who works full time, I have a limited number of days off that I can go hiking, and those days are at the mercy of the weather. I pick a few mountains from each category, and list them up in a weather app. I currently pay for 登山天気, which gives access to a 2 week forecast for all the mountains I registered as favorites. It’s very handy to get an overview. I make sure to list up mountains that are geographically dispersed so even if it rains in one place I have other options.Hourly forecasts are available from 3 days before, but further out the forecasts are daily. Hourly forecasts are important because the daily forecast might report rain even though it only rains late in the evening or at night. On the day itself, if the weather looks something less than sunny, I use Yahoo’s weather app to check the weather radar and see what the rainfall pattern is like.

Transport

I then start planning for how to get to these individual mountains. The main constrains here are transportion and accomodation. Since I go by public transport, I have to fit most hikes between the first and last bus to the trailhead. For most popular hikes near the city, there are usually buses that go to the trailhead. In remote areas, buses have further constrains such as:

  1. Running only on weekends, or weekends only during specific holiday seasons.
  2. Terrible bus timings because they expect hikers to stay a night, but I prefer to go fast and finish it within a day.
  3. Not actually a bus meant for hikers, which can mean quite a bit of walk from the nearest bus stop to the trailhead.
  4. No buses at all.

In the case of (1), I prioritize those hikes during the season. In the case of (2) and (3), I have to get creative with the routes. Sometimes this might mean taking a minor, possibly terrible route. Other times, I take a taxi to get the the trailhead so I can catch the return bus. It’s better to take a taxi getting there than on the return trip. When taking a taxi, it’s better to make a reservation especially if you’re starting early since most remote areas don’t have taxis waiting around. There is also a shortage of taxi drivers in Japan in general, and this is more pronounced in the remote areas. Getting back, I don’t usually able to pin down exactly when I will finish so it’s hard to decide when the taxi should come and pick me up. Anyway, taxis are expensive and are a choice of last resort.

This is the most time consuming part of the planning and generally involve a lot of Googling. Always be sure to check the latest bus timings since they might be the same every season or every year. A lot of these smaller bus companies also don’t usually have a good website and just publish the schedule as a PDF.

Route

For the route itself, I mainly use YAMAP. I sometimes reference books and magazines, but even so I confirm the route by looking at other reports on YAMAP. I also follow a few people on YAMAP who does hikes by public transport so I can see how they get to the trail. I download an offline map from YAMAP and use it for the hike itself too.

Accomodation

For hikes further away in different prefectures, sometimes I need to stay the night before to make the first bus out. In this case, I need a hotel.I usually delay booking my accomodation until the hourly weather forecasts are out. For popular areas where I need to book early, I mainly use booking.com or hotels.com since they usually have options with free cancellation. If the weather looks bad, I cancel.

Summary

That’s it.