Training Report - Mt.Tokachidake (Mt.Tokachi) 4

Tesseract came back the day before to Hokkaido from the mainland of Japan where he's doing his studies after one month of absence. His outfit is different from usual. Because with his usual clothing, he can't stand the cold of the Mt.Tokachidake Hot Springs, which is 23 degrees Celsius below zero. By the way, this jersey is that of the Italian team "Gewiss Playbus Cavallino" he belonged to when he was racing in Italy. He says this jersey brings him back old memories.


Dr.K's outfit looks like the same as usual. But he wears two extra jerseys.


Tesseract drinks frequently. Because it's going to freeze soon in this temperature although he's brought special drink with a concentration three times higher than usual drink (cf. Advice/Bottles).


Dr.Kdrinks frequently as well.


Approaching the altitude of 1000m.


Passing the altitude of 1000m. The temperature is already minus 20 degrees Celsius.


We entered the part of which the gradient is 14 percent.


The temperature is super low. But as we wear a lot, so far it's ok.


We are climbing hearing sounds the tyres and the snow make, which is different (similar but different) from those of minus 10 degrees Celsius.


The state of snow on the road is not good. So we are advancing with difficulty.


Thus far, we climbed talking together (but not continuously because the tongue freezes if we keep talking in this cold). We rode seriously only the last 3 hectometres like the last time on the Mt.Toakchidake (cf. Mt.Tokachidake 3).

Tesseract is arriving to the summit (the Mt.Tokachidake Hot Springs).


And arrived first to the highest motorable road in Hokkaido during the winter: 1280m, where the temperature was minus 23 degrees Celsius.

By the way, do you see the logo of De Rosa on his shoulder? De Rosa was the sponsor of the team he belonged to and he used to ride on De Rosa when he was racing in Italy. After 13 years of retirement, he miss De Rosa frames. So he ordered a De Rosa road frame with Campagnolo parts. So it's possible you see him riding on De Rosa this summer.

Dr.K once stopped due to bad condition of the snow on the road. So he was left behind.


He arrived 40 seconds later to the summit.


As it's super cold, we didn't stay long and began to descend soon.


As the temperature is low, everytime we blink, the upper eyelids and the lower eyelids adhere as they freeze instantaneously.


Tesseract's descending almost blindly. The lenses of his goggles are completely frozen. He says he can distinguish humans, cars but not white things like relief of the surface of the road, piled snow along the road.


Dr.K renounced to wear the frozen goggles in order to have better sight. But he says his eyeballs freeze.


During the descent, we lunched in a reataurant.

The frozen state of Dr.K.


That of Tesseract.


The state of Tesseract's goggles. There are frozen parts and fogged parts.


And the frozen goggles came back to life again with the heat of the restaurant. After eating, we resumed our descent.


As the road state is bad, Tesseract doesn't speed. You can see his rear wheel skids several times on this movie.
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Nor Dr.K, he doesn't speed.
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It was super cold in the downhill, especially to the parts of the face which aren't covered. Next time when we ride in such a low temperature, we'd bring ski glasses to cover the face more widely.

Tesseract won this descent as usual and Dr.K arrived later. The total gap (including that of the descent before the lunch) was 5 minutes 51 seconds.