Izumigatake (泉ヶ岳) is the Hausberg (local mountain) of Sendai. Actually, there are two – namely Mt Taihaku (太白山) but its elevation is with 320.7m much lower. The main peak of Izumigatake is 1172m high while the north peak (北泉ヶ岳) rises 1253m over sea level.
Izumigatake boasts a smallish ski area and at the foot of the mountain a Nature Exhibition Centre. You can camp there, do BBQ or inform yourself about the nature in the region. The best part about the Centre is though, that a bus goes straight to it four times per day from Izumichuo Station (泉中央駅). You can see the bus schedule from Izumichuo Station to Izumidake Shizen Fureai-kan (泉岳自然ふれあい館) here and the bus schedule from the Nature Centre back to Izumichuo Station here. The bus ride takes about 50mins and costs 720jpy one way as of April 2019. The website of Izumidake Shizen Fureai-kan (泉岳自然ふれあい館) can be found here.
The there are multiple trails up the mountain but the main course up Izumigatake is called Sujin course (水神コース) and from the trail head its about 3.7km and 630m in elevation change to the summit.
http://www.shizenfureaikan.jp/When I went at the beginning of April, there was some snow left on the lower slopes of the mountain. The trail itself is not at all demanding in a technical sense.
After about 1h20min I reached the summit (1172m). As I was hiking by myself though I didn’t take many breaks. At the summit I met a Neurosurgeon from Sendai who had hiked up the mountain at least 72 times already. He said he really enjoys this season for hiking because there are no crowds, it not warm nor cold and because there are no leaves on the trees the view was better. Can’t blame him!
From the summit I had a great view, however there was some bad-ish weather visible in the background…
From Izumigatake you can descend to 1060m and then climb the North Peak which is slightly higher at 1253m. I would highly recommend doing that, as the trail is quite beautiful with great views.
On the North Peak there was quite a bit more snow… From the Main Peak it takes about 45min to reach the summit of the North Peak (2.1km).
As it looked like there might be bad weather coming up, I decided not to cook my cup noodles on the summit but rather do it down at the Nature Centre should I have time.
All the intuition was of course wrong, as always and the sun came back out for the descend…
Nevertheless, after arriving at the Nature Centre of Izumigatake I still had 20mins to kill so I boiled some water for the highly anticipated cup noodles.
Thanks for stopping by today – as always, if you have any questions feel free to ask :)
You can also check out my other hikes in the Tohoku region of Japan here: http://nimar-blume.de/blog/tag/tohoku/