Kumano Kodo Day 1 – Kohechi Route

Destination: camp at 19km mark

We woke up at 4.30am to start this journey, catching the first train at 5.10am. The train to the trailhead was unfortunately suspended due to the typhoon the night before, so after a somewhat stressful morning of planning, we eventually arrived at Koya-san via taxi.

Beautiful clear blue sky above, it was hard to believe a 125mm, level 5- national warning of rain was pouring down here only 12 hours ago. We collected our pilgrimage stamp pamphlet from the information center, where we were advised against hiking the trail due to the danger of slips and typhoon damage. ”This is no joke” they said. We weren’t going to waste a beautiful day of hiking so we decided to go with the kiwi spirit of ”she’ll be right” and started our day 1 of Kumano Kodo! 

The trail started on a well-formed track, starting from concrete pavement in the woods and slowly to a soft dirt ground. The trailhead was already situated on a high 800m elevation, so it didn’t take much of a climb to start seeing beautiful views. The route was completely fine to hike despite the warning from the tour guide, with a few fallen trees or slips here and there. We were happy with our decision to hike.

We reached Oomata village, where there were a few options of accommodation to stay in, but our plan was to carry on, making tomorrow an easier day.

We carried tents as we couldn’t find much information about camp along the way, but fortunately for us we found this cosy cabin for sleeping.

I was also surprised at the lack of information for this pilgrimage considering how popular it is, being a world heritage site. Despite Japan’s reputation for advanced technology, web information in general feels so behind. Websites look ancient like it hasn’t seen any updates since the 90s, and heavily text-based with no pictures. Camping randomly in the middle of the woods is illegal and not recommended, so I was happy to have stumbled across this shelter. We sadly missed a few stamp spots at Omata village as we were in a rush – I didn’t think I’d be this into stamp collecting!

The evening got surprisingly cold up in 930m elevation! This shelter had everything – even a lighter for us to use as our spark starter did not work.

It got dark by 8 p.m., and while we were admiring the almost full moon, we heard an animal rustling in the bush from the bank below. Most likely a deer or a boar, but this sent chills down our spine from seeing all the bear warning signs so we quickly rushed back into the cabin.

We’ve been up since 4.30 am so we coma’d out immediately.

Elevation Profile

Total Km: 18.5km
Total Ascend: 1000m
Time: 5hr