Last Month’s Particularly Epic Cycling Adventure, Part 1

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/40 sec, f/11, ISO 1600 —
map & image data — nearby photos

The Theme for the Day

on a ride a month ago that I'm only getting around to writing about today

“Do Epic Stuff”

The mountains around Kyoto are such fertile ground for cycling
adventures, I consider many of the rides I go on to be “epic adventures”,
but the ride a month ago hinted at in
“Preview of an Epic Cycling
Adventure with Andy and Nigel” stands out.

It was supposed to be a short, vanilla outing
on well-known roads, but ended up being a
fantastic adventure. Finally, a month later, I'm
getting around to posting the longer version of the story.

Andy Clark and I met up with Nigel Randell at a convenience store at the foot of the mountains in northern Kyoto.
Joking around about the horrible setting for a portrait (a busy background with cars, fences, signs), I took Andy's
picture. A nice smile can compensate for the worst background...

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 35mm — 1/100 sec, f/2.3, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Picture Perfect Portrait

of Andy Clark

at the Lawsons convenience store in Ichihara

The route (full
ride map) took us up the super-hard Momoi East.
There are two mountain passes that are collectively referred to as “Momoi”
because one normally just follows the road through the first right to the
second, but we stopped in the small hamlet between, on a side road, at the
bulls-eye here in the map:

Few riders seem to stray from the road marked in yellow, so don't realize that there's
a vending machine at the bulls-eye spot. It's quite convenient, and the guys got coffee.

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 34mm — 1/250 sec, f/2.3, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Coffee Commercial

with a lion, because, well, lion

They're silly-crazy guys that egg each other on, so they got silly-crazy for the camera.

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 38mm — 1/200 sec, f/2.4, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

“Huge Guns”

Their silliness somehow reminds me of a video by Freddy Wong, an
American guy who started putting up videos on YouTube when he was 13 years
old, with an ever-increasing quality and complexity of video-effect
editing. He's now an adult making what one can only imagine is an extremely
lucrative living on YouTube. Anyway, Andy and Nigel's antics made me think
of one of Freddy's earlier videos, “Huge Guns”.

(You can see how far he's progressed in the video-effect department by comparing that
with
his latest video.)

We had intended to return to the well-traveled road and finish our
vanilla outing, but instead decided to take the road less traveled, the
“unknown” road marked with the green arrow in the map above. I'd discovered that road on a
wonderful trip the previous week with Manseki, so I knew that lovely
roads awaited us.

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.7, ISO 640 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Lovely Roads

taken while moving at 19 kph (12 mph)

The rain that was starting to sprinkle was less lovely.

At one point the road turns to gravel, and it's at that point that most
folks who ventured this far would turn around, but it turns out that the
gravel section is only 250m long before the road returns to pavement.

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.7, ISO 400 —
map & image data — nearby photos








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.7, ISO 320 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Folks are Dying to See This View

(sorry)

taken while moving at 24 kph (15 mph)








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.7, ISO 250 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Lush Greenery

taken while moving at 15 kph (9 mph)








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.7, ISO 1250 —
map & image data — nearby photos

taken while moving at 17 kph (11 mph)

We eventually make it to Ogose Pass (尾越峠) at 727m (2,385') and
continued down the other side. Nigel thought to take a video of me descending...

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/2, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Heading Down

12:21 PM (from start: 3h 16m / 38 km / 23.9 miles)

Ogose Pass (尾越峠)

photo by Andy Clark

Nigel had issues with his camera, so I went back and did it again...

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.7, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Heading Back Up

photo by Andy Clark








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.7, ISO 1600 —
map & image data — nearby photos

More Lovely Roads

on the way down

taken while moving at 13 kph (8 mph)








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 75mm — 1/80 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Nigel Descending








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 75mm — 1/125 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

I don't know whether you can see the green color of the road, but the
road surface was permeated with mossyness, which would make it extremely
slippery if the rain picked up enough to make it through the treecover. It's steep enough that it's slippery even when dry, at least when riding
out of the saddle where most of your weight moves to be over the front
tire, leaving little weight to help the drive wheel grab traction. I was a bit worried about the return trip.

Toward the bottom of the descent, there are some junk cars, an unfortunately not-rare
sight in Japanese mountains...

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 31mm — 1/15 sec, f/7.1, ISO 3200 —
map & image data — nearby photos








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 28mm — 1/80 sec, f/2.1, ISO 1250 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Silly Selfie

We continued through the very small (seven houses) hamlet at the foot of the descent, and up the start of the next climb.
Eventually the road gets pretty rough and gravely, and in the previous trip I'd gotten only so far as a gate across the road
a few kilometers past the hamlet. But this time we could ride through freely, and soon after the road returned to pavement.

And, at about the same time, the rain really picked up.

And then Andy got a flat.

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/60 sec, f/1.7, ISO 320 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Setting Up In The Slightly Less-Wet Area








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 58mm — 1/50 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Andy's Frustrated Face

he's a high-energy, high-happiness kind of guy








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.7, ISO 640 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Searching For the Source of the Flat

if it's something protruding through the tire, the next tube will puncture right away

After 1.1km of 7.9% climb on utterly-pristine paved roads, we came to a “T” in the road and this
rustic road sign:

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.7, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Both Seem To Be “Roads Less Taken”

“Kuta” one way, “Haccho-daira” another

We'd never heard of “Haccho-daira”, but knew “Kuta” well, so we went that way.

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/2, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Heading to Kuta

at about the four-hour mark for my trip

The pavement had ended at the “T”, and the road became very rough crushed rock... too rough to be called “gravel”...

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 62mm — 1/125 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Not For Road Bikes

Especially since Andy had already had a flat, he wasn't in the mood to
ride this kind of crazy-rough surface on his road bike, but we egged him on
for a bit.

SC-04E at an effective 31mm — 1/220 sec, f/2.2, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Me Photographing the Rockfall

photo by Nigel Randell

We really didn't want to turn around — that slippery return up to
Ogose Pass was on my mind — but we also didn't want to continue if
the road was this bad. Because I had the most
offroad-ish bike (my new
bike hadn't arrived yet), I took it upon
myself to go ahead a bit to see whether the road
got better, and indeed 200m later it did, changing to normal gravel. So with Andy's grumbles mostly ameliorated, we forged ahead.

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 30mm — 1/100 sec, f/2.2, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Crossing Through 860m

Prior to this, the highest I'd ever climbed was the 817m to Onyu Pass








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/640 sec, f/1.7, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Very Nice Retaining Wall

our tax yen at work   /-:








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/800 sec, f/1.7, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Approaching the Pass








Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/800 sec, f/1.7, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Minetoko Pass (峰床峠)

elevation 887.5m (2,900')

taken while moving at 10 kph (6 mph)

This pass doesn't actually have a name that I could find, so I just named it myself, for the mountain that it goes
over.

Having arrived at the pass we knew that it must be mostly downhill from here, literally. Little did we know that
the best adventure for the day still awaited.

To be continued...