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Saturday 7 May 2011

Suma to Shin Kobe



I'd planned to go to from Suma to Mt Maya but...

Turns out the trail doesn't start at Suma or at Sumakoen, it starts a bit west of Suma on the Sanyo line. Something we worked out thanks to the enthusiasm of two bin men and Linda's Japanese. So the 45 minutes to the start of the trail turned into nearly 2 hours.
The trail, when you find it starts as it means to go on with a step climb up some steps. It is lovely and there are some stunning views, great scenery and excellent trail but it is stop start.

The trail mixes very steep hiking with a little bit of running some 'yomping' through suburbia and probably the most sustained steep 4-5 km climb I've done in a long while, and we hit it at the hottest part of the day - not clever as there is no refuel point before Futatabi which left us both out of fluids.



Just after Futatabi we took a wrong turn and ended up retracing our steps, adding a few more feet to the elevation profile and probably another kilometre or 2 to the distance.
With all the delays the heat and my general fatigue we headed down to Shin Kobe from there and caught the bus back to the Island.


The signs in the suburban areas are there but sometimes take a bit of looking for they are usually white and usually (but not always) like this:



I guess the trail is no more than 30% runnable and probably about 30-40% paved in one way or another.

Having covered all of the Rokko Traverse now (exept the last few km to Takarazuka and I'm not planning on going that far) I would say the whole route is probably about 50% runnable (but probably not by me) and about 50% paved. There is a significant amount of hard hiking to be done.

Details Suma - Shin Kobe

1 comment:

  1. Fantastic! Looks like the Puig Campania if you squint ; )
    Great to hear that you are back on form : )

    ReplyDelete