Snow Riders- Susono Fire Road

Despite tired legs from a rare two-days-in-a-row of riding, Brian and I got out for a third ride today. And it was a long, hard ride; a GOOD ride.

We went up to the Fire Road via "Factory Route" (a moniker we've given to one of the routes up to the Fire Road). The ride up was tough because our legs were already pretty used up, and one might think that once we reached the Fire Road, we would have searched for the nearest, quickest way back down and home. No - not us!

There's a ride we'd been wanting to try for a while. Years ago, we used to ride up a trail behind our beloved Gotemba Kogen Beer hall. Then, suddenly, construction crews were present and building a new road. Finally - that newly constructed "road" which is really just gravel and dirt and, now, snow, goes all the way to the Fire Road.

We discovered this two weeks ago or so, when we decided to re-explore one of our old haunts and rode up to the Fire Road via the Kogen. So today, we opted to ride along the Fire Road and to descend via the Kogen...

Now, the FR makes getting from A to B a lot longer than it otherwise would be, since we're riding along a mountain ridge. The ridge is above the "snow line", so it actually snows here while it only rains in Susono; and so we covered more and newer territory than in a while - not only had we not gone this way in many years, we hadn't actually ridden in snow in more years than that! And today, despite the fact that the sun was shining and we were comfortably warm, we had to ride uphill and downhill in a fair amount of snow.

Here's Brian riding through the snow:


And here's me with Mt. Fuji in the background:


The novelty of it all was wonderful. The scenery was great, the ride was invigorating, and we had no flat tires today; and, happily, we enjoued a couple of German beers while sitting in the sun outside at the beer hall at the end of the ride! (Which was, obviously, below the snow line:-)