Ishizuchi is the highest mountain in western Japan, at 1,982 metres, and it has been climbed as a religious act for far longer than it has been climbed for the view. The pilgrimage route is still there, and so are the chains—four of them, hanging down the rock near the summit, which climbers pull themselves up in the traditional way.

The ropeway company publishes the season by altitude, and reading it is like watching something descend. The summit begins around the start of October. The area around the top is at its best about the tenth. Jojusha, the shrine partway up, runs from mid-October to around the twentieth. The Nishinokawa valley at the bottom holds on from late October into the middle of November.

Ishizuchi is the centre of Ishizuchi Quasi-National Park and one of Japan's traditionally recognised sacred peaks.

Six weeks, and 1,900 metres. That is a long autumn for one mountain, and it means the useful question is not when to come but how high you intend to go. The ropeway and the approach path will put you at Jojusha without any climbing at all, and the colour there is the same colour. You do not have to reach the summit to have seen it—the chains are a separate decision, and they can be left for another year.