Ash
Warming-Up
- Apr 23, 2006
- 686
- 1
Shay and Ken, thanks for organising that wonderful ride! I hope it is just the first in a series of "Western tours". Thanks also to all members who have joined. Alan has again proved to be unbeatable up Kazahari-toge. Now I am waiting for my compact bike...
I am most grateful to Aaron for suggesting the ride up Nokogiri-yama. It didn't take long to convince Daan and me, after climbing Kazahari-toge it appeared to be an irresistible challenge. And what a sweet and masochistic torture it turned out to be!
About 8 or 9km of hill climb, with an *average* gradient of 12% on a sometimes dangerously narrow and meandering dirt road covered with branches, stones and boulders. Fuji Hill Climb, here we come, I am no longer scared!
From Nokogiri-yama we descended Route 205, the same route Philip and Christoph had climbed the very same day - the "BBQ road". Route 205 eventually leads to the "T-junction" along Route 33. Aaron left us earlier, taking the train from Haijima. Daan and I wanted to go to Tachikawa, but I had a blow-out just 10km from the station. Without rinko-bukuro and all spare tubes and patches wasted it was a long pilgrimage back to Eastern Tokyo where I finally arrived at 11.30pm - having ridden the last 10km on a tyre as flat as a pizza. Getting home proved to be the most daring undertaking on that otherwise exciting day.
Thomas, Pucci, Philip!
I wonder if anyone could write a slightly fuller description of this mountain. I was very interested by what Thomas wrote and Yasuhiro and I would be interested in giving this a go. Could you fill us in with a bit more detail as to how it goes?
thanks
Ash