I’m back at the dam after a filling lunch of curry. So far I’ve trudged up eggplant valley, taken the steep spur to Ichigaikaburi-no-se, and followed the gentler ridge to Mt Hidaka. There’s still one final route to explore, the much-feared Botte valley, a narrow gorge connecting the reservoir and a saddle between Mt Hidaka and Mt Hoshida, my first target of the day. I take the track around the western edge of the lake, the same one I followed towards Hayakari in Chapter 3, but instead of leaving the gorge east for Ichigaikaburi, I follow the river upstream along a poorly marked and heavily overgrown route that very few hikers attempt.
The first obstacle in my way is a series of toppled trees clogging the valley. I scurry over these timbers and tramp through a thick grove of ferns past an abandoned dwelling that must have taken a monumental effort to construct in such a secluded location. Continuing upstream, I cross landslide debris along a dodgy trail with no handholds as the route rises above the stream towards a waterfall. I need to climb up and over the falls on the right side of the riverbank, but the footing is incredibly poor and I reach a point where I will need to commit my full attention on one single footstep that could mark the division between a successful ascent and a nasty tumble resulting in broken bones or worse. The ground is damp and slippery, and I freeze in place, pondering the potential outcome of a bad decision. My shoes are worn nearly to the tread and have served me well up until now, but with a 5-year-old daughter at home and the responsibilities that fatherhood brings, I just can’t seem to take that next step, so I do what any sensible human would do in such circumstances – I retreat.
Giving up on Botte valley does not mean mission over, however, as a more standard route to Mt Hoshida now awaits along the gentle ridge to Hidaka. Rather than retrace my steps back to the reservoir, I return to the abandoned house and trust my instincts: if someone built a house here, there’s got to be an access point from above. So I climb and climb, grabbing onto anything in my path along an incredibly steep and narrow spur. The contour lines on my GPS do suggest a way through, so I trust them and fully commit to the climb ahead of me. I eventually regain the ridge at an unnamed peak blanketed with an unkept mane of bamboo grass. Swashbuckling my way through the dense undergrowth, I eventually pop out into familiar territory at a saddle below the start of the climb to Mt Hosokuri (see Chapter 5).
On the far side of the knob, I once again arrive at the junction below Mt Nakao. Instead of sticking to the ridge along the ‘easy course’ to the summit, I veer left on the makimichi below the ridge and reach a junction just below the ‘steep route’ to the top. Since I have already been up Nakao, I veer away and instead head left for a rather abrupt and surprising descent down to Botte valley. I reach the edge of the narrow stream – this is where I would have ended up had I stayed my original course. The valley floor, due to the moisture trapped by the sides of the steep walls, is a lush green, carpeted by a healthy grove of ferns and plenty of bamboo grass. The vines dangling from the evergreen trees overhead bring to mind the jungles of Okinawa.
I cross the stream and am led via a DIY signpost, a creative display scrawled on yellow tape wrapped around a disused PET bottle and subsequently impaled on a lime-green gardening stake. Thank goodness the feudal era is over, or the bottle would likely have been replaced by the head of the warrior of a rival clan. My route leaves the valley floor as quickly as it enters, up the angled confines of Mt Hoshida’s root-infested western face. Pockmarked by toppled trees in places, the trail leads me around the tangled mess and along a series of chest-high boulders which offer vistas across the valley towards Takatsuki city.
How fitting it is to arrive on the summit of the namesake 51 Mt Hoshida (星田山) that helps define the entire mountain range. Interesting enough, on ancient maps of the region this mountaintop also goes by the name of Uma-ga-mine, which also happens to be the name of my 50th summit. I can see why modern mountaineers prefer the newer Hoshida moniker in order to avoid confusion. I forgo a break for the time being as the adjacent 52 Mt Seikai (星海山) beckons – it being just a short climb across a narrow saddle to the northwest. The up-and-back takes less than 5 minutes and I soon return to Mt Hoshida for a late afternoon snack. As I dig into my stash of snacks, who do I see approach but good ole Seino-san. “Again”, he shouts, offering a friendly smile and words of encouragement as I show him the dwindling list of mountains left to climb. “You’re almost there”, the vest-donning elderly hiker quips, before disappearing down the steep descent towards Botte valley. I watch as Mr Seino fades out of sight, wondering if I will get another chance to encounter his 76-year-old presence before he either gets too old to climb or I get too bored of these sandy knobs.
The encounter of a familiar face gives me a second wind as I head due south for the final quartet of peaks in the Hoshida massif. The sun-baked ridge runs parallel to the fairway of the 5th hole of the golf course. The leafless canopy allows me to catch glimpses of the tree-cloaked Dōato-mine on the other side of the fairway. It is fairly tempting to drop off the ridge, scale the fence, and race up the slopes in search of the lost past if not for the lawnmower currently grooming the grassy meadows of the fairway. I get the feeling that the golf course employees would not take too kindly to tresspassers so any attempts at an ascent would have to be discreet at the very least.
This final section of ridge is absolutely stunning as the sun creates long, golden shadows on the gentle traverse to the summit of 53 Mt Saratani (皿谷山). A fork in the spur here leads southwest on an unmarked track to Mt Higashi-Botte but I keep to the main ridge southeast in hopes of looping back via another unmarked route on my map. I hop over a toppled tree and duck under another, following the natural contours of the spur and barely notice the signpost hand-painted on a cherry tree on 54 Mt Ike-no-uchi (池之内山), the second highest knob in the Hoshida range.
A narrow sliver of trail between thick strands of bamboo is all that separates me from 55 Mt Minami Ike-no-uchi (南池之内山). On the summit I notice a fork in the route. A hand-crafted sign warns hikers that a left here leads to a dead-end at the golf course and instead instructs hikers to keep to the ridge, which I do through a healthy forest of hardwoods glimmering in the afternoon light. The end of the spur is reached and with nowhere to go but down, my route spits me out in a narrow valley blanketed in bamboo. I break through a section of undergrowth to reach a very old and dilapidated forest road that probably last saw vehicular traffic during the Reagan administration. I turn right on what is left of the road, stepping through toppled bamboo that cracks loudly under my feet and reach a abandoned green bus slowly being reclaimed by the elements. I am reminded of the Chris McCandless story and half-expect to find the corpse of a hermit inside the ramshackle vehicle but I am too afraid to peer inside.
The overgrown road leads past two small ponds until reaching a clearing just below the summit plateau of 56 Mt Higashi-Botte (東拂底山). As luck would have it, someone has affixed rubber tubing to the tree roots lining a short but steep climb to the final summit ridge, so I hoist myself up and reach the top for my best views of the afternoon. Rather than retrace my steps back to Mt Hoshida, I drop down the southwestern face along a faint track of pebbly scree and reach a broad ridge of thick golden grasses blowing gently in the cool late-winter breeze. I somehow forge a way through and arrive at the place where I turned back after summiting Mt Botte (see Chapter 5). I race up to the summit of Mt Botte and continue on over Kunimi-mine and Mt Nishitani and follow a well-used track all the way out of the hills and into an affluent collection of homes in the Hoshida Nishi neighborhood.
I follow the road downhill for a bit but keep an eye on the GPS for an unmarked turnoff. At first I miss the track and have to retrace my steps until finally spying a narrow track on the far side of a small grassy plaza. The route immediately dives into a thick bamboo grove ablaze in that golden hour glow which spits me out into the grounds of Uchiage shrine, but it is not the fox god that I seek. An additional track branches off in front of the shrine and climbs through a gorgeous oak grove and I find what I am looking for: Ishihōden burial mound.
Built in the late Kofun era, the stone tomb is the only one of its kind in the northern part of what was known as the Kawachi province. Excavations near the tomb revealed pottery fragments dating from the mid-7th century, but little else is known about the burial mound, including who was once buried inside. It is generally agreed that someone of great importance and stature was interred here due to the painstaking efforts of design and construction of the tomb, whose entrance faces west toward Osaka city.
After a quick look around, I retreat back to the grassy plaza and continue walking down the paved road until reaching a bridge spanning a deep gully. On the far side of the bridge is a modern apartment complex built snug against a curvy hillock smothered in bamboo. A signpost adjacent to the apartment building indicates that it is private property and that entrance is prohibited to those not residing in the structure, so I wait for a gap in the traffic and take off in a sprint past the sign and adjacent building and scale a set of log stairs built into the hillside. Once inside the bamboo grove, I follow a green barbed-wire chain-link fence to find the signpost for the 110m-high 57 Mt Onna (女山) or female peak. Why someone would barricade their overgrown forest of bamboo is beyond me, but some landowners have a propensity to be incredibly possessive. In order to avoid being discovered, I drop down the northern side of the peak and slip out into a quiet neighborhood of homes whose residents are likely engaged in their evening meal rituals.
The sun has now hit the horizon, but my next peak lies on this same road just to the north, so I walk back to the main road and past the Fresco supermarket towards another grove of bamboo. My next peak is also on private land and my initial planned approach is from a vacant lot from the east, but wouldn’t you know it – a man it out there with his digger excavating the land for no apparent reason. Maybe he heard I was coming and just decided to thwart my progress instead. This forces me to walk around to the western face to reach an access point through a farmer’s field. Again I wait for a break in the traffic and then sprint up through the network of fallow land and duck into the bamboo grove and climb to the top of a steep hill to find a signpost for 58 Mt Katano (交野山), which is just 83 meters above sea level. Despite the absurdly low altitude, there is actually a triangulation point here and a signpost indicating that the knob is also known as Ōtani.
I run back through the fields under the guise of dusk, escaping the wrath of the locals and continue onwards to the next peak, once again to the north. The main route is from the south, but since I am on the opposite side, I try my luck approaching via the cemetery invading its lower slopes. As I walk up the approach road, I see the caretaker placing cones across the road, together with a signpost indicating that the graveyard is open from 8am to 5pm daily. I gaze at my watch: 5:10pm. Turning around once again, I pull out the GPS in order to navigate through the maze of houses and reservoirs separating myself from the southern face of 59 Mt Takaoka (高岡山). Numerous wrong turns lead to more lost minutes, and by the time I do reach the trailhead I need the assistance of my headlamp. I race up the steep hill, past a small shrine and into a clearing above the cemetery and take in the last of the sunset oranges on the horizon.
I drop back down to the Hoshida neighborhood and negotiate the various turns that will lead me to my final destination, which is marked by a long, steep, stone stairway through a park. I ascend to the top to reach a road and playground, and just to my left I discover a shrine gate sitting in front of a large stone stupa flanked on either end by two rusty metal lanterns. Affixed by wire to a tree next to the gate, I find the signpost for 69m-high 60 Mt Shingu (新宮山), the lowest of the Hoshida 60 and my official end of the road. In the Muromachi period, there were two sanctuaries built upon this hilltop: a Buddhist temple called Aizenritsuin and a Shintō space by the name of Shinguyama Hachimangu. Both fell victim to the separation of Buddhism and Shintō at the beginning of the Meiji era and now all that is left is this stupa which gives visitors a tiny taste of what used to be.
With the Hoshida 60 (map here) now complete, I return home but still can’t shake the ghosts of Komatsuji temple from my mind. A proper investigation is necessary in order to provide proper closure to the saga. Stay tuned.
The Tozan Tales 
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