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Official Ride Tour de Westside (15th TCC Tour)

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... :p

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! :D

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. :warau:

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
 
Hi Ash . . .

Not much to add from our write up of the ride:

https://tokyocycle.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=363

We went south to north (Okutama). It is steep. Really steep. You follow a concrete road that is about 2 meters wide - enough for a small van. The concrete has grooves running across it's width to enable cars to deal with slippery snow. The concrete is broken and worn by the weather. You cannot see much until the top - but what a beautiful view when you emerge from the 'jungle'! My back wheel was spinning on green moss making progress twice as difficult as necessary.

Nokogiri is hard. Really hard. But it is worth the pain - a real beauty.

You must go and ride it. Then tell us what you think. You will not be disappointed I promise.

Cheers,

Philip
 
my view

I can only give a very short description. No way I was able to see any of the nice views which probably have been there, since I only looked at the tarnac. In fact loking to the sides would mean falling since you could lose some of the valuable momentum.

However I can recommend the Nokogiri, I think we only met two other cyclist/motorcycles during the whole climb and descend. At one moment while climbing I heard Thomas and Aaron talking to each other, however i took me two more minutes to meet them at the top. NOT ONE car or motorcycle to be heard!

good luck
Daan
 
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