The Shikoku Pilgrimage T88+B20 : 四国遍路 12

Shikoku Pilgrimage 2022, Day 14 (May 8, Sun)
Michi-no-eki Katsuura - Hoshi-no-iwaya - Mt. Nakatsumine - ridge lines walk - SAKAMOTO
Visited temple: None
Walking distance: 19km
Before COVID border shutdown, one of the most questions I was asked by international pilgrims was what to do around the michi-no-eki in Katsuura town.
After overcoming T12 mountains, the temple ping-pong of T13 to T17 and coming back to Tokushima city downtown area, average walking pilgrims usually ended their one-day walking around T19. So, on the following day, they usually get to the Katsuura michi-no-eki around lunch time. Should they keep going on to T20 and T21 then?
Well, the part of continuous multiple mountains between T20, T21 and T22 is considered as hard as the T12 mountains. Besides, this part is one of a few almost no-lodging available area of all Shikoku pilgrimage. Once you start walking up to T20, you need to get to T22 to have some lodging options. The distance from T20 to T22 requires one full day walking with a lot of steep up and downs.
So, I usually tell people not to start going up to T20 but stay in Katsuura town for that day. Though you could just go to your lodging to have a short day, I would encourage you to visit Hoshi-no-iwaya waterfalls and temple with short fun round trip hike from the michi-no-eki.
I repeat in this post again that Hoshi-no-iwaya is a true hidden gem along the Shikoku pilgrimage trails and worth visiting.
On our Day14 of Shikoku pilgrimage, SAKAMOTO’s cars took us as well as other guests back to Michi-no-eki area in early morning. From there, after stopping by the only convenience store there to get foods and drinks, others walking to south to go up to T20 to move forward and only two of us started walking to the opposite direction to the bottom of Mt. Nakatsumine.
Just after crossing a submersible bridge over Katsuura-gawa river, we stopped by the last vending machine for today and the last bathroom before getting to the peak of the mountain.
There are two routes to get to Hoshi-no-iwaya, both starting from the vending machine and bathroom. One route is a narrow and paved farm road going through Japanese mikan orange orchards and small cars can reach Hoshi-no-iwaya on this route. The other also begins with narrow paved road but after going up a bit of higher altitude, it became a natural mountain trail. This one has been historically walked as pilgrimage trail to Hoshi-no-iwaya and stone buddha images of mini-Saikoku 33 pilgrimage are placed along the trail.
Weather on this day was forecasted to be extremely hot and in fact, the sun light has been weirdly strong and so bright and shining. As we were walking through the first road part through mikan orchards, exposed directly under sun light, we literally felt the temperature was going up and up.
If this was just a day hike for fun, we would consider canceling the hiking and stay indoor to avoid heat stroke. As a matter of fact, we saw only a few other hikers around the mountain today even if Mt. Nakatsumine is very popular local hikers’ mountain and it was weekend. Tokushima local hikers know when not to hike for safety reasons. The reason why we were still walking was that we are so familiar to the planned route for this day and knew where we should be able to get water supply and most importantly, the most parts of the route would be covered and shaded by thick tree forests. Plus, we left our heavy backpacks in our room at SAKAMOTO as we were staying there two more nights.
Once we entered tree-covered forest road, the air cooled down dramatically and after walking up in slower pace on the natural trail through forests, we arrived at Hoshi-no-iwaya.
After unusually dry winter and spring, the waterfalls at Hoshi-no-iwaya didn’t have as much water as we expected considering the decent rainfalls two days ago. Yet the waterfalls looked still beautiful and soothing.
Whenever we came here, this place was very quiet, hidden in the middle of the mountain and we rarely see other people around. Autumn foliage here is amazing but my favorite time is during or right after rainy season with the waterfalls bigger and stronger and all thickly grown trees and glasses shining green.
The main waterfall has a narrow half-open cave behind. Legend says when young Kukai was practicing and walking around Shikoku and came to Katsuura town area, he found an evil star causing local people suffering from various bad events. He fought against the evil star with his esoteric prayers and rituals and won. He imprisoned the star in this cave rocks and since then, all the disasters to the locals stopped.
Also, here, look for the images of three Fudo-myouo curved on a rock cliff by the waterfall, on a live camphor tree and a rock plate.
From Hoshi-no-iwaya to the peak, there is only one trail. It is pretty steep straight up trail so many parts are fake-wood stairs. We walked up still in slower pace not to sweat and spent too much energy here as it was still only the first part of the entire route of nearly 20km for the day. Thanks to the thick trees’ shades and higher and higher altitude, the temperature and humidity were not that bad. Katsuura town is usually windy and the breeze through the trees really helped us walking throughout the day.
After an hour or so, we got to the paraglider park located on the flat space a bit below the peak. We used bathroom (you have to flush water with the reserved waters in 2 litter pet-bottles stored by the toilet) and got water supply. (a sign says it is not water for drinking so we always use water filters) From there, only very short hike, we reached the peak of Mt. Nakatsumine.
Usually on weekend, a lot of local hikers enjoying lunch and tea on the peak rest area, but we saw only a couple of people there this time. Knowing still long way to go, we didn’t really stay the peak for long and kept going.
The next part of the route was long stretch of trails on ridge lines connecting multiple small peaks. Along the trail, occasionally you can enjoy great views to many different directions and the continuous breezes helped us walking surprisingly comfortable. This ridgeline trail part seems so good for trail running and Erik would run here sometimes.
Since we know so much about this ridge line trail, we walked through in a pretty good pace, and got to the point called Tsuetate-toge pass, where we left the ridge line and started going down on a winding paved logging road through Japanese cider forests to SAKAMOTO.
Through SAKAMOTO and its neighborhood mountain village were right below where we were, the logging road was so long and winding to keep the slope angle gentle.
I confess that we were bored at this point and quietly kept moving our legs just thinking about going back to our comfortable room. But I want to emphasize that it was not today’s route or trail’s fault, but we had walked on this route enough times already.
We were gradually going down and came out of the cider forest part. We were now walking and looking down idyllic farmhouses scattering in mikan orchards spreading on mountain slopes.
Just before getting back to SAKAMOTO, we stopped by Sakamoto Hachiman shrine since this shrine often has beautiful flower displays in the water of a wash basin and seasonal decorations around shrine area. This time, we even found a new real-size replica of a flying kind dinosaur displayed at a corner of the main Shrine. Katsuura town is one of few areas in Japan where many fossils of dinosaurs were found, and the colorful flying dragon replica was the owner of the oldest fossil of their kind found in Japan.
We got back to SAKAMOTO around 4 pm. As always, we damped our sweaty cloths into a laundry machine and dived into the big hot bathtubs to get refresh.
After all, the weather and heat condition were not as bad as we expected, actually it was pretty comfortable to walk thanks to tree shades and nice breezes.