- Elevation 1771m
- When to climb September - January, mid-April - June
- 7.5km (or 5 hour) loop course, with the option to do a longer 15km course.
Mountain stats
3 hours from Tokyo. Take a highway bus to Kawaguchiko station, and then a local bus to the trailhead.
2 hours drive from Tokyo, with a carpark at the trailhead.
Mt Amagatake (雨ヶ岳) is a mountain near Lake Motosuko with an elevation of 1771m. It’s one of the mountains in the 36 Views of Mt Fuji series, which I am now getting quite close to completing! I climbed it as my final hike for 2024.
Mt Amagatake is a bit overshadowed by the popularity of its neighbours. On its right you have Mt Ryugatake (竜ヶ岳), which is a beginner-friendly hike with great access directly from Lake Motosuko. And on the other side, you have Mt Kenashi (毛無山), which is nearly 200m taller and has some insane views of Mt Fuji.
So Mt Amagatake tends to be climbed together with those peaks rather than on its own. However those hiking courses can get quite long, and I’d climbed both of those peaks on separate hikes before. So for today’s hike, I decided I wanted to stick with a more leisurely hike up Mt Amagatake.
I climbed Mt Amagatake on Christmas day. Although in Japan Christmas isn’t a public holiday, I generally take the day off anyway so this hike was like a little solo Christmas celebration to myself. I had my fingers crossed that I would get to see Mt Fuji.
About a 10 minute walk along the road from the carpark, you’ll reach the trailhead, the “Tokai Nature Trail Entrance” (東海自然歩道入口). The Tokai Nature Trail is a 1700km, 40+ day hiking course from Tokyo to Osaka, and today’s hiking course partially runs along it. It might be a nice bucket list item to walk the whole thing one day!
You’ll soon enter the forest, where you climb for about half an hour up to Hashita Pass (端足峠).
Once you climb up to Hashita Pass, you’ll reach a four-way intersection. From here there’s the option to descend down to Lake Motosuko, or climb to Mt Amagatake or one of its neighbours.
A bit over an hour into the hike, I got my first view of Mt Fuji!
The view is a bit obscured by the trees, but there’s a lot of other opportunities to get glimpses of the surrounding scenery. You can see down towards Lake Motosuko, which is the third-largest (and deepest) of the Fuji Five Lakes.
You can also see out north towards the Yatsugatake mountain range. It’s nearly 3000m in elevation so it’s already covered in snow by this time of year.
And finally, you can also see out towards the neighbouring Mt Ryugatake. Its peak is mostly covered in a field of bamboo shrubs or sasa and so you can just about make out the trail winding through it as well.
As I continued to climb, I could see some snow on the edges of the trail. By mid-January I’m sure the peak is probably covered in snow.
About 10 or 15 minutes from the summit, there’s a nice vantage point to get a view of Mt Fuji, although it was worryingly starting to be obscured in clouds.
And as I kept climbing, the clouds got thicker and thicker. And the scenery was quite non-existent at the summit - not quite the view I was hoping for!
The clouds were quite fast-moving though, so I decided to wait around and see if Mt Fuji would show his face again. I ended up waiting about 15 minutes, and I’m glad I did, because the clouds completely cleared!
It was fairly brief, but I snapped a million photos before the clouds came back and I started to make my descent. Today’s course was an out-and-back, so I followed the same trail back to the trailhead.
Hiking course options
| Date climbed | Length | Course time |
|---|---|---|
| 2024-12-25 | 7.5km | 5h (the expected time for an average hiker without breaks) |
Today’s hike was a 5 hour, 7.5km out-and-back course to Mt Amagatake via the Tokai Nature Trail trailhead (東海自然歩道入口). There isn’t a toilet at the carpark, but don’t worry because there is a toilet next to the trailhead.
This is the most direct way to reach Mt Amagatake, but if you want to climb it as a set with one of the neighbouring mountains, you have a number of options:
- A 15km, 9h loop course that also passes by Mt Kenashi. Quite long, but popular with hikers looking to get a longer distance hike in. Since you are near a main road, there are a couple of bus stop and carpark options depending on where you want to start your hike.
- A 14km, 9.5h point-to-point course that takes you past Mt Kenashi and Mt Ryugatake - pretty good if you want to hit all three in one go!
- I couldn’t find an official course map, but on Yamareco you can see an example of someone climbing Mt Ryugatake together with Mt Amagatake. Climbing Mt Ryugatake is traditionally a 6km loop course, and adding on Mt Amagatake brings it up closer to 14km.
Public transport access
The nearest bus stop to the trailhead is Nebara (根原バス停). From there, you’ll walk just a couple of hundred metres down a gravel road to the carpark where I began my hike.
The bus to Nebara departs from Kawaguchiko station and takes just under an hour. If you got the 09:05 bus, you’d get to Nebara at 9:58. Giving yourself 5 hours to hike, you would be able to get back to the bus stop in time to get the 15:19 bus back to Kawaguchiko station.
Hypothetically, I think you could maybe climb to Mt Amagatake, then descend down to Lake Motosuko and find a bus to catch back from there. But a quick Google didn’t really give anything - if people are doing a point-to-point course, they seemed to tend to do all three mountains in one go (which is quite a long hike).
Car access details
| Car park | Time (from Tokyo) | Round trip cost |
|---|---|---|
| Nebara carpark (根原駐車場) | 2h20min | ~7500 yen |
The car park has a 500 yen fee, payable in cash to a little mail box. There’s no change, so make sure to bring along enough coins.
The car park is quite small, so I’m not too sure how it fares on weekends. I came on a weekday, so it was just me and one other car. There is a separate small carpark slightly closer to the road for overflow parking as well.
When to hike Mt Amagatake
Since one of the main highlights of Mt Amagatake is being able to see Mt Fuji, you’ll be looking to climb it in the colder months, when your chances of seeing Mt Fuji are higher. Looking at YAMAP, Mt Amagatake gets a quarter of its visits in December alone. November and January are the next most popular months, although I’d double-check the trail conditions in January as there probably will begin to be snow at some point. It looks like there still can be snow as late as the end of March, but expect the trail to clear up sometime in April.
I would also recommend against climbing Mt Amagatake in the hotter months, as Japanese summer can be pretty brutal.
You can see the latest activity logs on YAMAP to get a sense of the current conditions.
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