29 March 2009

Abandoning Mikkuni Toge


T
homas from TCC and I attempted the Mikkuni tour organized by the TCC a day ahead of everyone else. I thought I was clever going for Saturday with the supposedly better weather, but ended up regretting the choice exactly for the weather. We had to give up on climbing Mikkuni as we were facing increasingly heavy snow. We bumped into Steve from TCC, who was just coming down again after going up a further 200 meters and confirmed it would not get better.


So instead of going up Mikkuni, we cut through to Gotemba and climbed Nagao Toge from where we had a wonderful view of Lake Ashi and even some rays of sun emerging. We returned to Shin-Matsuda via Kintoki Toge and the valley behind it which was very scenic indeed.


It was my shortest ride so far - just 85km. But at least the two passes provided for a good work-out, with 750m and 400m climbing, respectively. Altogether, we did 1,600m of climbing - not bad for such a short ride.

1 comment:

the ups and downs of a belgian amateur cyclist in tokyo said...

Can't believe you've progressed so much you can even beat Thomas (even if he suffered from want of sleep)! Congratulations! I'm afraid I'm no longer a worthy match for you Ludwig! (except maybe for those ultralong hauls...)