The Kumano Kodo is a 1000+ year-old pilgrimage route through the Kii mountains in the Wakayama peninsula.  I did the Nakahechi route from Takijiri to Nachi, via Hongu. There are other route options, but this is the most popular of the bunch. Pretty amazing trail. You are under canopy for much of it, but there are some spectacular views and you can’t beat the history. Along this trail there are dozens of ancient shrines, archaeological remains, you pass though old villages and there is a hot spring!! Finished my journey down the road from Nachi in Kii-Katsuura and took advantage of one of the Ryokan style Onsens. Epic few days.

Trail Notes: Most people don’t through hike this. Rather, they book accommodations in the villages along the route and shuttle their luggage forward every day, which seems ridiculous to me. There was nothing in the literature that said you couldn’t make camp in the forest, and I found a couple bloggers who had done it that way, so I went for it. From what I can tell, it is allowed but not encouraged. Anyway, this hike is almost entirely climbing up and down mountain passes and the trail is cut into ridges, which means there aren’t too many flat spots to make a camp. Be patient and give yourself plenty of time for an area to open up… be discrete, dont sleep on a sacred site, leave no trace, yada yada. Here is what I found, if it helps:

Day 0: Due to a train snafu, on my part, I arrived at Takijiri near sunset, so I hiked in about a kilometer to right around trail marker 2 and found a site suitable for a tent.

If you have more time, there is a mountain hut (not sure if its cool to use) near marker 9 and also a rest area with a clearing at marker 13.

Day 1:  Hiked in about 22K to marker 42 and made camp.

Day 2:  Hiked about 25K and stayed at the Kawayu pay campsite ($7). There is a natural hot spring in the river nearby and I highly recommend it. Also, there is about 5K of road walking to connect the Nakahechi section and the Kogumotori-goe section. This puts you about 2 km from the next day’s trailhead.

Day 3: Hiked about 18km this day and made camp right behind the rest shelter and water source between markers 26 and 25 of the Ogumotori-goe section of trail. Its about 2km in from the start of this section. About 10 meters before the shelter look for a footpath on the right… follow it to a small clearing up the hill behind the shelter.

Day 4: Hiked the 15km out to Nachi, caught a bus down the hill to Kii-Katsuura and stayed at Onsen.

Takijiri shrine at trailhead

I called him Frank. If he looks mean its only because I stopped petting him.

Giant Japanese Blue Earthworm… Freaking thing is HUGE

Japanese Badger eating one of those monster worms

Badger buddy

View into Hongu

Gonna be a ton of frogs

rained all of day 3

View from the last peak before Nachi

Nachi waterfall (largest in Japan)

Nachi Taisha

Chillin at the Onsen

Just a few pics… I am bad about taking pics in the cities.

Australian Open Finals

Bondai

Before seeing Away at the Opera House

Circular Quay at night

Mojo… my fav bar

Son of a B*&^%!

My airbnb host showing me how to properly eat a Tim-Tam, which is serious business down here.

Forecast called for light showers day one, followed by sunny 50s and 60s.  Instead I got a 3-hour snow, ice and freezing rain storm… and I got sick. Due to lack of return shuttle options, I had to race through this one a bit. Feeling sick, I didn’t take as many pics as I should have.  Beautiful country, but cold. It was 40ish degrees in the sunshine… in the 20s at night.

Beautiful start to the track

“light showers”

Holy fucking hell! So much sleet the camera can’t focus.

White out conditions!

Loved the play of the clouds and the treetops… like upside down shadows

Warmed up to mid-50s as I was waiting for my ferry out! Broke out the shorts!

This is Australia’s most famous track, which is why I was surprised I didn’t see another through-hiker until the last night. Amazing views, ridiculously well maintained trail and so much wildlife… saw wallaby, kangaroo, ring-tailed possum, koala, parrots, cockatoos and a dozen other really cool birds.

So it begins..

“Superb Blue Wren” – male

Luxury trekking…

140yr old anchor… The Fiji

Ring Tailed Possum (with young on back) crawling into nest

Parrots

Cockatoo

Wallaby

Later, dude…

Twelve Apostles

Little bastard was faster than my camera

This one was wild. Completely pristine – hardly anyone uses this track.   I am going to leave some track notes here as there is limited information on the internet.  The info I did find was either completely exaggerated (you’re going to die!) or plain wrong. Hopefully if you are googling this walk you will find this post.

Track and Route-finding:  I walked this track from Shipwreck Creek all the way into the only pub in Bemm.  Due to water availability I did it 4 days, but the 4th day was largely walking into the village of Bemm.  The blogs I found about this hike describe route-finding as challenging, describing the inland routes as overgrown, appearing and disappearing, etc. I found it pretty straightforward, really.  There are a couple tricky spots but if you are paying attention you should be fine. If you use GPS, the OpenStreetMap map layer in Garmin/Earthmate has this entire track on it and you can pre-load the route to help you out if you get confused.  I figured this out after I traced it from the aerial map layer. To my point, if I could trace the inland routes from a photo taken from space, you should be able to follow it on the ground.

Water Availability: This is a real concern. Aside from a spring a kilometer or so from Red River, which isn’t guaranteed to be wet year round, the only other water sources are the rain collection tanks at the drive-in campsites you run into at the inlets (Wingan and Mueller/Thurra). That is it! These are spaced roughly 25K apart so be prepared to hike that distance daily or carry a ton of water.  I carried 5 liters a day.  Its hot and exposed so make sure you carry enough.

Inlet Crossings: There are a few possible inlet crossings. Most are closed (sandbar to walk across) but if there has been heavy rain be prepared to cross more.  Wingan Inlet is open year round and you will have to cross it.  I crossed within a couple hours of low tide, swell was low, and the water didn’t even come to my belly button.  The other possible crossings are at Mueller/Thurra (within a couple K of each other), Tamboon and Bemm/Syndham. These are open to ocean so they would absolutely need to be crossed at low tide. Download the tide chart before you go and time your walk to make sure you don’t get stuck.

Day 0/1 (~27K):  We left the car at Bemm and bussed our way into Mallacoota. For a few extra bucks the bus driver agreed to personally drive us to the trailhead at Shipwreck Creek. We opted to hike in a few kilometers to the cove at Seal Creek (highly recommend) and made camp for the night. The following morning we hiked our way through to Wingan.  There is a pretty obvious path (~1.5K) from the beach to Wingan campsite where the water is – you can camp there in a section for walkers or you can camp anywhere you want on the beach. This is the day you will do most of your inland walking with some beach sections.

Day 2 (~20K): This is a day with some forest hiking but mainly beach and whole lot of bouldering.  No water anywhere until you get to Mueller or Thurra.  We met some fishermen at Mueller and decided to make camp there. There is no path to the Mueller campsite.. just wade along the edge of the inlet (a half a meter deep) until you get to camp. You can see it from the beach. You could also opt to keep going to the Thurra campsite a couple K down the beach. If you do, don’t follow the OpenStreetMap – pop over the sand burm after the inlet crossing and you will save yourself a long walk.

**THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE FOR WATER!  YOU HAVE 45K OF WALKING LEFT!!

Day 3 (~25K): This last section is a bit of doozy.  The Parks Victoria website describes this section (from Thurra to Bemm) as 28K, which is correct if you stop at Bemm Inlet. The problem is, unless you arrange for a boat to scoop you up or you decide to swim a couple kilometers, there is no access to town. For that, you need to walk another 10K of coastal beach and then pop out onto Pearl Point Track Road and walk another 5K into Bemm. I  didn’t realize this until halfway through day 3… I assumed the Parks Dept would include the walking route out. Once I did realize this, I walked to a point right in the middle of Tamboon and Bemm Inlets and made camp for the night.  This day is also largely beach with the exception of a fantastic, but short, bush walk from the lighthouse.

Day 4 (~20K): Woke up with the sun, packed up camp and hiked the 20K to the pub at the Bemm River Hotel.  Had a frosty in my hand by 11:30am. Considering I drank all my water the previous day, the beer tasted mighty fine. Mighty fine, indeed.

When I have more time I will create better GPS files and post them here so you can simply load them into Google Earth or whatever map/GPS system you use.

Enjoy the hike! It’s an epic one!

Crazy rock formations

Brightest full moon I have ever seen!

Red River

She may look delicate, but they build ’em tough down here.

Lots of rock hopping.

Goana!!

Sunrise!

I was the only footsteps for miles.

Point Hicks – where the Brits discovered Australia.

Cool little lunch spot.

Little penguin drying off after a brief but crazy thunderstorm.

The colors after the storm…

Last night.

Just me and the dingos on the final stretch.