Off-season Training Report - Kenashi Pass

The temperature was around 24 degrees Celsius at the Kenashi Pass (648m). It was about 30 degrees higher than the temp we are used to. In comparison with Sapporo, it was cooler. Because this day, it reached 30.3 degrees Celsius in Sapporo.


It was previewed that Mr.Takahashi would participate in this training. However, he couldn't due to an urgent business. So only Dr.K and Tesseract came here to train.


We did a time trial of 6.84km from the car parking at 510m up to the summit of the Kenashi Pass (648m). Normaly, we don't do time trials here in summer. In summer, we do it from 250m point to 470m point where the road is steeper. As the studded tires are so heavy, in winter we do time trials on the road less steep from 510m to the summit. So this part of the road is for winter time trials. However, this time, we did it here to compare how the time differs from that of winter.

We took a photo of souvenir at the observatory car park at the altitude of 470m which is closed in winter just after the warming-up.


At the start point. Some construction work was ongoing there.


Dr.K departed at first and Tesseract departed a minute later. Just after the start, Tesseract had a mechanical problem with the cycle-computer sensor and he repaired it riding at 40km/h. So he might have lost several seconds due to this problem. Tesseract rode on the climbing which is not so steep just after the start at around 40km/h and got Dr.K in the range soon. However, the road was getting steeper and as Tesseract was not good at steep climbing, the gap didn't decrease up to the first summit. Then we began to descend. Tesseract decreased the gap considerably in the descent riding at a high speed. We reached the foot of the next climbing. Just after the commencement of this climbing, Dr.K was caught by Tesseract and passed. But the gap between them didn't increase in the steep climbing. When the climbing went less steep, Dr.K couldn't keep up the speed of Tesseract and the gap began to increase.

Tesseract arrived at the summit. His record was 14 minutes 21 seconds and the average speed was 28.6km/h. It was about 7 minutes faster than the time trial with studded tires.


And Dr.K arrived. His record was 15 minutes 58 seconds and the average speed was 25.7km/h. He says it was about 10 minutes faster than the time trial with studded tires.


You can compare these records with the winter time trials clicking Kenashi Pass, Kenashi Pass 2, Kenashi Pass 5 or Kenashi Pass 6.

We descended in the direction of Akaigawa and passed the village centre of Akaigawa. After having passed the centre of Akaigawa, we climbed the Hiyamizu Pass (340m).


The Hiyamizu Pass means "Cold Water" in Japanese. Like this name, at the summit of the Hiyamizu Pass, the wind from the Japan Sea is always cold. This day makes no exception for that. We are not sure if it was named so after that.

At the Akaigawa side of the Hiyamizu Pass. The stratovolcano you can see on the photo is Mt.Yotei (1898m).


The route after the Hiyamizu Pass was undecided. We were hesitating to descend between in the direction of Yoichi and the direction of Akaigawa. Finally, we've decided to descend in the direction of Akaigawa.

This day, there was a festival at the centre of Akaigawa. So we ate soba (kind of Japanese noodles) there and resumed the course for the Kenashi Pass.

From Ochiai, we took a narrow road which is closed in winter.


We passed the Kenashi Pass again and descended in the direction of Otaru.

Riding in summer is also good. We can pass many roads which are closed in winter, we can enjoy the view from the car park which is closed in winter and we can eat in restaurants which are closed in winter.

Tesseract's travled distance was 87.4km, the average speed was 23.6km/h and the maximal speed was 73.2km/h.


The Kenashi Pass Profile