The ropeway:
ride up, walk down.

Three separate reasons point the same direction, which is unusual enough to make this an easy call.

The money. ¥1,100 one way against ¥2,000 return means the second leg costs you ¥900 ($5.71). Walking down is free, takes the best part of an hour and a half on the Momijidani route (the Tourist Association gives 1½–2 hours for the climb), and ends you at the bottom of Momijidani Park, a ten-minute walk from the shrine — so you are not stranded anywhere awkward.

The direction. If you are going to walk one leg of Mount Misen, walk the descent. Going up on foot is 1½–2 hours of steady climbing on the Tourist Association's times, in Hiroshima's summer humidity; coming down is easier on the lungs, and the granite steps are manageable in daylight. The trails are stone and root, not scrambling, but they are steep enough that the knees notice.

The deadline. The ropeway's last descent is 16:30, and that is the hardest cut-off on the island. Buy a return and your whole afternoon is scheduled backwards from it, including the 30 minutes each way to the real summit that people always forget. Buy a single and there is no deadline at all — you come down when you are finished, and worst case you use a phone torch on a marked trail you have already looked at.

What happens if you miss it. Nothing dramatic, but nothing pleasant: it is well over an hour on foot down to the shrine, in failing light, on stone steps, after you have already climbed. People do it every week. It is entirely avoidable by buying the fare that does not have a deadline attached.

The upper station is Shishiiwa, at about 430m. Mount Misen's summit observatory is at 535m, and the walk between them is roughly 30 minutes each way over uneven granite steps and exposed rock, with a short drop and re-climb in the middle. It is not technical, but it is a real walk, and in August heat with a 16:30 deadline it catches people out.

Plenty of visitors ride up, look at the view from Shishiiwa, ride back down and believe they have climbed Mount Misen. The view from Shishiiwa is good. The view from the summit — 360 degrees over the Seto Inland Sea and its islands — is the one worth the day. Budget an hour at minimum for Shishiiwa to summit and back (the operator says about an hour), and note that there is currently a detour near the top. The summit observatory is staffed only in the daytime and locked otherwise, and it sells no drinking water — carry your own.

The Reikadō (霊火堂) hall on Mount Misen burned on 20 May 2026 — the hall that sheltered the 1,200-year 「消えずの火」, the flame said to have been lit by Kūkai and the source flame for the Peace Park's Flame of Peace. The fire spread to the trees around it before it was put out. The flame itself is reported to have survived: its embers are kept in more than one place, as they were when the hall burned in 2005. The mountain reopened to walkers on 21 May and the ropeway is running, but the path from Reikadō to Sankidō is closed and summit walkers are routed via Dainichidō. Many English guides still describe the hall as standing.

So the full honest sum for a ropeway visitor: 10 minutes' walk from the shrine to Momijidani, a shuttle or 15-minute walk to the lower station, roughly 15 minutes on the two ropeway stages, then 30 minutes to the summit, time at the top, and 30 minutes back. That is 2.5 to 3 hours from the shrine, before you walk down. The routes on foot are here.