Training Report - Mt.Tokachidake (Mt.Tokachi)

At the foot of the mountain. Dr.K already wore the face cover. But he felt too hot and he took it off afterwards.


Tesseract had worn warm like the Kenashi Pass 15 to stand the cold of the Mt.Tokachidake but it was too hot at this low altitude.


We reached the altitude where trees were all white being snow covered. It's hard rime produced by supercooled water of clouds.


Trees are more and more white.


Beautiful. Isn't it?


The fork situated at the altitude of 1010m came into view.



We climbed talking together but Dr.K began to drop.



Tesseract waited him several times. Dr.K is sprinter so he is not very good at uphill.



We regrouped here again but Tesseract decided to leave Dr.K behind. He began to climb on his rhythm.
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This steep climbing is very hard for Dr.K who is sprinter.
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Tesseract entered the section in which the road is very steep and also he's entering the cloud. The gradient indicated on the road sign is 14 percent.


And Dr.K entered the steep section and he's entering the cloud.



Tesseract arrived first at the Mt.Tokachidake Hot Springs. This is the highest motorable road in Hokkaido during the winter. Its altitude is 1280m. It was snowing and the temperature was minus 13 degrees Celsius here. It was quite cold.
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Dr.K arrived to the hot springs 2 minutes 10 seconds later. The climbing of the Mt.Tokachidake must be very hard for him who is sprinter. His field is the flat (cf. Funaba-cho).
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The bus stop of the Mt.Tokachidake Hot Springs.


As the temperature was low, the hexagonal form of snow crystals is well preserved.



As it was really cold and the supercooled water of cloud was depriving the body heat rapidly penetrating jersey, we didn't stay long on the summit so we began to descend soon.


Tesseract is descending very prudently and very slowly because it was very difficult to control bikes as the road was covered with thick fresh snow and the compacted snow beneath it was very soft. He is passing this corner locking the rear wheel's rotation intermittently using the brake to turn the bike. You can see in this video the moment he manipulates the brake lever. He says the road was too steep so that he uses the power slide. But the studded tires he uses: Mudmad of IRC with motorcycle studs grasp this kind of road better than the other tires.
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Dr.K is descending using the rear brake constantly. His super-light studded tires of Nokian with studs for bikes is suitable for icy condition but not suitable for this kind of snow.
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After passing the fork at 1010m, the road state became a little better but the road was still covered by soft snow. Moreover, the piled snow of snow removal is left on the climbing lane... Tesseract is still descending very prudently and slowly stopping pedaling intermittently to balance as the tires are often taken by snow (if you play back in slow motion, you can see he stops pedaling for a short moment in front of the camera as the tires are taken by snow with a huge sound).
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Tesseract arrived first at the foot of the mountain. At this altitude, the road is covered with well compacted snow and hard ice. So you can finally ride normally. By the way, his studded tires with motorcycle studs make huge noise riding on ice.
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Dr.K arrived at the foot much later because he had had problems with the brakes.