Day 4: Temple 12

Today was a 12km hike into the mountains to Shosanji. We were fortunate as the place we stayed at, Ryokan Yoshino made us onigri and took our packs to our lodging place tonight so we didn't have to carry them.  That was good as the trail had many steep places including a few with ropes. 

The views were wonderful throughout the hike.

We are getting to know the cadre of pilgrims hiking along with us. Most are doing just part of the pilgrimage as it's hard to get 50 days off work.

Part way through the hike we found a very large cedar tree that Kobo Daishi planted. You can see pilgrims in the lower left corner and a large statue of Kobo Daishi to the left of the tree.

A long walkway led to the temple in amidst the cedar trees. It even had a phone booth!

An hour past the temple, we reached our lodging for the night.  You can see a map of my tracks here (you may have to refresh the page after a minute to get it to show).  If you have Google Earth, it is faster to download a Google Earth file of my adventure from here.

We walked 16.4km today with 1049m of altitude gain. You can see my Gaia GPS tracks at Gaia GPS.