Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Category: Travels

Exploring Mt Eboshi near Sasebo

Mount Eboshi is the most the promeint mountain surrounding Sasebo.  So of course I had to go up there and see what the deal was as I had been told there are trails up there.  I had even been given a very rudimentary map.  During my first visit I realized the map was pretty outdated and soon was relegated to remain in the pack as backup mountain money.   Luckily there were a few trailhead maps that I was able to key off during my second visit and things started coming together (sorta).

This is pretty much your average trail look near the top of the mountain.

Ready to get your chunk on?  (Yes this is the trail)  This this is pretty much the most extreme section of trail in the area, this type of rock is found interspersed along the trail and provide some nice character and features.

While stopping to smell the flowers this critter came along.

Check out this lookout/rest stop.   Look at this angle on the benches.  Does that not just scream, “Take a load off, lay back and relax”.

A skinny little bench cut that reminded me a bit of the SART.  It was one of my favorite and longest sections.  There is a lower section to this trail that appears to be rarely used that was also superb but suffered from some deadfall.  I spent some time and cleared the stuff that could not be ridden over.  I was hoping to see it continue on down the mountain but it stop at a road instead of crossing it and continuing onward.  Bummer.

Sort of a hazy view from the summit of Eboshi.   There are three trails going up to the summit, one is pretty mild, one looks nasty, and the other I have verified is a hike-a-bike pain in the arsh with just a merger 309 steps on the final section to the top.

   

Yes I counted them and even took notes  — I didn’t have a pen 🙂

A view from coming down the south side of the mountain.

While there is are some nice sections of trail I have yet to find a good trail that cashes out most of the four plus miles of climbing it takes to get up here on the road.   Most of the trails are up on top and none of the trails I have found go more than a third of the way down the mountain before dumping out onto roads.  I have found remnants of trails but the pace of Mother Nature’s reclamation program there just does not seem to be enough use to keep some of them from becoming overgrown.   With a few or so seasons of TLC  this place could be a far east MTB mecca quality playground.   More to follow…. 🙂

Snooping around Sasebo, Japan

So work has taken me back across the International Date Line for some more adventures in Japan.  This time I am in the south of Japan in the city of Sasebo.     The work is interesting with some new challenges to keep me on my toes.  I even have run into some old freinds from San Deigo who are calling Sasebo home these days.   What was really cool upon arriving here were all the freaking mountains I saw on the drive from the airport to the city.   Forested ridgelines that seemed to go on forever was pretty much the norm.  Early last week, I snagged a rental and have started snooping around.   With promenant peaks in just about ever direction there is plenty to explore.   There is not much of a organized scene here MTB wise, but there is a culture of hiking and what I would call “Micro-National Parks” in the area.  

This past sunday I checked out some of the in-town mountains.  There was quite a bit of road interconnecting to get to the trails but I think it was worth it.  This is an exceptionally pretty area so it was more like a tasty road-touring cake with some yummy dirt frosting on top. 

The view of the a small slice of the “99 Islands” from Mt Ishidake.

Zippy along the trail on Mt Akasaki.

Hmmmmmmm, where to go next?

The chunkier route less followed.

Brushing this out of your face along the trail is kinda cool.

Brushing these off your face is not so cool.  They get about as big as a silver dollar and while harmless they can freak you our when you get “Bulls-Eyed” right in the face with them.   This has happened more times while riding in Japan than I can count.

One of the mountains within the city limits of Sasebo is Mt Yumihari.  It is sizable and the roads are a bit steep.  While I have been on Mt Yumihari a couple of times already, there is no real trail system but more a like series of not quite connected trails.

 

Still there appears to be plenty of stuff worth exploring.

There are some stunning views from the summit, but I thought some of the more interesting bits were off in the back corners and the not quite so accessible spots.

This little spot about several hundred meters past and a brisk climb from all the parking lots was absolutely empty and made a pretty tranquil spot to chill and knock back a snack.

I recognized this as soon as I saw these as they were also near Mt Takayama near Yokosuka.   This is the basement foundation for a anti-aircraft gun battery used during World War II to protect the port of Sasebo.   I could not help but think what must have been gone through the minds of the soldiers manning this battery on August 9th 1945 when “Fat Man”, the second atomic bomb, was dropped on Nagasaki just 30 miles to the south.   On a clear day they would have had an unobrstructed view of ground zero and the mushroom cloud that reached upwards of 60,000 feet.  I’m sure they must have felt and heard it for sure.   Talk about being a witness to history.

There was this faded sign nearby.

By this time I was getting pooped and the my daylight buffer was getting a little short for full blown by myself and unaided by maps exploring.  I went down the mountain on a new route that included an extremely narrow one-lane paved road and took notes on all the various trails heading off here and there to be snooped at on another day.

It was a great day on a bike and I slept like a baby that night.

Updated Fugato-yama Japan Page

I have finally got my first of what I hope to be half a dozen a or so updated and new Japan trail pages up.  The Fugato-yama (aka Ghosttown” area is a really cool trail system that I have yet to fully get into each corner of yet.   The updated page reflects a bit of work left to be done as far as the trail information goes. I highly recommend a GPS for riding this area unguided for the first time and I have included a bunch of electronic data to help with that effort.   The primary file is a Google Earth KMZ file that includes a topographic map overlay that I created using data from the Japan Geospatial Institute.   Additionally most waypoints in the file also links to trail junction photos I took while playing around out here.   I hope this will be a useful tool for my peeps who visit the area.   

Updated Fugato-yama webpage

Mammoth Lakes – Finishing Up

The last half of the family vacation were hella fun.  On Wednesday, the boys and I went up the mountain for some more trail fun.   We got off at the McCoy station about took “Trail Home” back down the Adventure Center.  From there we took the gondola back up to the McCoy station and took “Brake Through”.  The boys were riding quite well and was quite surprised at how quickly they have been progressing over this week.

 Jake on “Brake Trough”

The boys were itching to try some more difficult stuff so we decided to check out the lower portion of “Flow” and then onto “Shotgun”.   They really dug the more difficult terrain and some of the features like the wall ride.  

Will getting some good height on the Shotgun wall ride

Jake getting a little wall action.  Even with just getting barely on the wall he giggled and thought that was the best thing ever.

Will decided to tackle a log ride further down the trail.  I was a little apprehensive about it but was pretty stoked when after several attempts he nailed it.

 

We finished off the day at Lake Mary by renting some pedal boat to fart around on the lake and do a little fishing.     There was a lot more of pedalling around than fishing and Casey and Jake proved that pedal boats are not swamp proof.   It was the best boat rental ever as got way more than our money’s worth of laughs out of them.

On Thursday, while the family slept in, I we got in some runs on a few of the double black diamond trails.   They have some pretty gnarly trails up there that lett me humbled and stokes at the same time.   I did a couple of runs down Techno-Rock before hitting up Chain Smoke to Twilight Zone.   I was shotting some video and did not get any photos.    I can see a bigger bike in my future if I wanted to ride terrain like that on a regular basis.   For the final run, I went back up and did Bullet to Follow Me.    I was back at the room by lunch.

In the afternoon, the boys and I went checked out the old Mammoth Consolidated Mine.   The remenants of the buildings and equipment all over the site that are pretty cool to poke around.   

There is even a mine shaft that you can check out.  It is plugged some 30-40 down the tunnel but is really cool as you can still see the rails for the ore carts.  When I say cool, literally applies because as soon as you step into the the tunnel it feels like the tempurture is in the 60 degrees range. 

After finishing up at the mine we spent the rest of the afternoon feeding the fish at Twin Lake one baited hook at a time.    The following morning it would already be time to pack up and head home.  Man does time fly when you are having fun.  This was a great vacation and one I sure we will remember fondly for many years to come.

Mammoth Day Two

What a fun day in Mammoth we had yesterday.   After leisurely getting up and around, the boys and I went off to do some fishing at some of the local lakes.    Fishing is a good way to help teach the value of patience and we should have been doing this more often.  With my kid’s daily life of video games, hockey, skateboarding, bikes and all the other things that keep them buzzing with activity it was good to put things in the slow lane for a change.  We were all reminded that is called fishing and not catching.   

 

On several occasions we watched trout swim right below the rock were were perched on.   One even came up to the surface and gulped down a bug that just landed on the water. 

I was really stoked when my boys not only got to see a Bald Eagle but also watched it swoop down and pluck a trout right out of the water.  The eagle then landed on an dead tree nearby and proceeded to scarf down the trout.

While all Bald Eagles are big birds this was not a huge eagle like the one I saw in Anacortes, Washington earlier this year.   One thing is for certain I was so stoked that my boys got to have such an awesome nature experience without having to turn to the Discovery channel.

My mid-afternoon we decided to cut the fish some slack and headed back to the condo.   Looking at the clock we realized we had enough time to catch a gondola ride up the mountain.  Jake and Casey had some shopping on thier to-do list so Will and I suited up and headed out for a run down the mountain.  Will has been bucking to do some of the more difficult trails on the mountain.   I was also looking forward to some of the more technical and feature/stunt oriented trails as well but at the same time the Dad in me has been apprehensive about putting Will in over his head.  

After talking with some folks I decided to test Will out on the black diamond upper section of “Skid Marks”  that starts off right off the top of the mountain.    Will did quite well through the rocky bits and switchbacks, but did take a minor “soil sample”.   He did have all of the protective gear on so he did not even get a scratch.   I did find that following my son through the technical and semi-exposed sections made my riding more difficult as my brain kept switching back and forth between mountain-biker and dad mode.      

Once I realized that Will’s bike handling skills have been improving significantly I found that I was able to spend more time riding with him as a fellow mountain biker and and less as a protective father.  After Skid Marks we took the more intermediate trails of Paper Route and Juniper down the mountain and enjoyed some great swooping and flowing singletrack goodness down the mountain.  

The late afternoon light was really nice and colors of the mountains were starting to go off.   We stopped a couple of times just to take in the views.  Will has always enjoyed the thrill of riding but I think something may have clicked this afternoon about intrinsic value of experiencing the scenery and of the overall outdoor experience beyond simply the enjoyment of riding the bike.

Family Vacation at Mammoth

I took the family up to Mammoth Lakes for the week to get in some vacation time. The plan is to relax, ride some trails, do some fishing and whatever else strikes as interesting.   Yesterday we hit up the mountain for a bit of lift-assisted mountain biking.   It was pretty nice to spend no energy to get up 11,053 feet and then ride trails back down to the condo at 8,200 feet and many miles away.  

Will and Jake clowning in the gondola

The Boys at “Top of Sierra”.  The views from here are pretty freaking impressive.  

We did the Off The Top trail from the peak.  It was pretty interesting riding above the tree line.  Will led out like shot off like a bat out of hell.  I was happy to see that he followed some directions on waiting at every trail intersection.   He actually did better than that.  He would rip for a ways and then wait to see Jake and I to come into view.   Jake was a little intimdated at first with the expansiveness of the mountain side up top but after a couple of switchbacks he got the hang of it as was zipping along quite nicely. 

After “Off The Top” we hooked up with “Beach Cruiser”  that took up back down to the bottom of the gondola we took up.  From there we picked up “Downtown”.   Downtown was a heck of a lot of fun that I’m guessing is around 5 miles or so long.    

Here are the boys taking breather on Downtown.   Yes they are looking at little pooped at this point.   I’m guessing we did about 13.5 miles of trail riding in the morning.   The downtown trail is really fun and it literally comes out of the woods across the street from the condo we are renting.   Over lunch the boys got some energy back.  A few hours later we were all headed back up the mountain for another run down the mountain.  The boys were certainly good and tired after the second run.  We spent the rest of the evening enjoying a hearty meal and relaxing before the boys zonked out.

Fugato-yama exploration

Well I’m back on the right side of the International Date Line and I must say I had a really cool time in Japan but I’m glad to be back at home where I have more “normal” things to fill up my day like leaky facets, broken sprinklers, kid’s hockey games and other family goodness.

The last two weeks in Japan were pretty busy so not much time to play online, but I did get in some riding.  Specifically I went out to the largest chunk of forest on the pennisula.  Most of my friends refer to this area as Fugatoyama, but it is actually a sizable chunk of the Kanagawa Wildlife Protection Area that has several names.  Topology-wise there are a series of ridges lines that form a reverse C shaped bowl with a river that forms and flows from east to west  of out the outlet of “the bowl” and onward to Segami Bay.  Most of the riding occurs and the northern leg of the “C” and down the northeastern flanks of the ridgelines down to the Tokyo Bay side of the pennisula.  

In 2004, I had done quite a bit of exploring on the southern leg of the reverse C. There are nice sections of trail in that area interspresed with hike-a-bike and aggressive sections.   If you have ever ridden Bell Ridge or Los Pinos in Orange County it is sorta like that but forested and the trail is often criss-crossed with roots.  I had snooped around for connections between the North and South legs but had mostly found brutal steep hikes that were “Advanced/Expert Hike-A-Bikes”. 

 

I really wanted to find a connector that only included some “Upper Intermediate Hike-A-Bikeage”  After a good bit of research I had some proposed routes that inlcluded going into “The Bowl”.   There is an awesome chunk of trail going into the bowl.  It is wonderful sweeping flowing singletrack that gracefully looses its elevation into the bowl.  I was hoping to find such another trail leading out of the bowl to the south.   Hope…..Hope on it’s own is for idiots who are too stupid to come up with a plan.  The plan was to be mentally prepared for a brutal hike-a-bike up to the south or bailout on a proposed trail along the river to the west.

“The Bowl” is an amazing wooded area that rivals some of the best forested scenery I have ever been in. I found myself not making much headway and I was enjoying every minute of it.  

I learned a really interesting bit of information from some of the locals about the snakes of Japan.  All of the venonmous snakes have slited eyes while all of the non-venonmous ones have round eyes.   The drawback to practically applying the information is that you have to get close enough to them to figure it out.

After exploring most of the options in the west end of the bowl I was soon started picking trails that would take me towards the southern ridges.  The bowl is not as much of a bowl as I had expected as there were some smaller ridges inside of the bowl that proved to be beaters.   This was by far not the first I had failed to fully appreciate the thin topo lines spaced closely together.   My payment to the mountain gods would come in the form of burning calves and triceps as I carried, lunged, and pushed my bike up the trails less traveled.

Once I had gotten up onto these intermediate ridges, I was presented with some trail options that left me scratching my head.  It was one of those things were I was pretty sure were the splits would take me but knowing and confirming are two different things.  I took a couple of these options as out and back to confirm were they were coing before continuing along my intended route.  

The next series of trail options shed off yet some more elevation and took me further down into the bowl.  When I reached a point where there was supposed to be a four-way intersection, I only found a T-intersection with my intended direction being the missing leg.    From pouring over my Japanese maps I figured out that I would have to take a long uphill climb that would most likely be hike-a-bike way to the west to catch the southern leg of the “C”.  I already knew the southern leg would also have a bit of hike-a-bike between the riding sections.   I was feeling fatigue creeping in but more importantly I was mentally growing tired of the hike-a-bike exploring.   I opted to take the trail option that followed the stream/creek downstream.

Boy was I glad I went that way.  After a good bit of technical riding, the trail started mellowing out and the riding got real flowing and just awesome.  I now started encountering some hikers here and there.  The further west and downstream I went the more mellow things got.  This was one hell of a great “bailout”. Eventually the “trail” ended at and old road that has been turned back over to mother nature when the wildlife protection area was established.   Mother Nature is doing a mighty fine job with this road.

Over the next few miles the trail/road turned to a dirt road, then a paved road and before long I was back in rural civilization.   I ended up taking a series of streets and trails back to the apartment.  While cruising back I got to thinking that if this was back in the states, it would surely be designated wilderness area or some kind of sensitive area that would be off-limits to bike.  Hats off to the Japan and thier outdoor culture.  Trails are trails over there.  You can ride your bike anywhere you dare too including national parks and thier wilderness equivalent.  From what I understand there are only a few trails in the entire country that are off-limits to bikes. One of them is Mount Fuji and that is closed only during the busy hiking season.  After dinner that night I broke down and packed up the bike and got all packed up to finish that last bits of work and fly home the following evening.

Exploring the Kamakura Mountains

Last weekend I went out to revisit some of the Kamakura trails I have been on in 2004 and also check out some of the trails I had never ventured down before.   This area is really awesome and it offers a lot of great trails that range from mild buffness, to scary hairball rocks and roots.   Navigating around here can be real interesting.  There are lots of trails optons and not all of them are well marked.   Even when marked, there is the whole language barrier thingy for me to help keep things interesting.

There was no shortage of good trails.  

 One of my favorite things to do when riding out here is to stop by this mountain rest stop were you can grab a bit of local grub as well as a mid ride snack.  It seems like you are out in the middle of nowhere until you come upon this place.   This group of hikers I had been leap frogging around for about and hour or so as I checked out most of the various splits in the main trails while they plodded along.   

 Yummy Oden.  It is mostly different types of Tofu, veggies and seaweed. 

 After lunch I decided to check out a route that none of my friends had tried before.  (Or at least not talked about)     The trail started near the mountain hut and went to the Kencho-Ji Temple in Kamakura.  

 For being a trail to place considered peaceful and good, the trail was more like a guantlet of trail evilness.  There were enough roots, rocks and drops to get most riders thier fill of technical playtime.  This would be a good trail to come and session all the features on. 

After a but of tough riding and a fair amount of hike-a-biking I arrived to the mountain peak above the Kenchoji Temple.   What followed after this was a very long, narrow and steep set of twisting stairs.

The stairs lead to the upper area of the temple known as the Hansobo which is the temples inner sanctuary. There are numerous and very impressive statue of creatures known as Karasu-tengu which roughly equates to Crow Goblins.  They are considered part of the protective spirit of this place.

 

 The Kenchoji Temple ranks first among Kamakura’s so-called Five Great Zen Temples and is the oldest Zen training monastery in Japan.   It was built in 1253.

The light was pretty crappy that day for taking pictures and I seemed to be having a “bad camera day” for some reason when it came to getting a good shot of the temple buildings.    There were lots of artists out working on thier craft and I soon figured out they had all the right viewpoints.   Thier paintings were much more interesting than any pictures that I was trying to get that day.

After spending about an hour on the temple grounds I meandered my way through downtown Kamakura and back to the apartment.   It was good to get in some culture along with a nice chunk of riding as well. If you like to read some more about the Kenchoji Temple first check out this site before hitting up Google.

I love bamboo!

Who cares about the little retaining clip dohicky thing anyway?   That is what I have often thought about the clip that goes onto the end of the post used on XTR brakes to keep the pads and the spring in the calipers. I have also thought of these as being along the same lines as “lawyer tabs” on forks.   I mean the post is screwed in anyway.    Okay so I noticed the clip had went missing a week ago.  No big deal.   Well out on a ride a couple of days ago it became a big deal.  All of the sudden my back brake went completely dead.  Lever to grips and no pumping would help.  I was also in the middle of precarious dip in the trail so it was “exciting” to get through the section and then get stopped.  I check out the brakes and holy smokes!  There was nothing back there.   Both pads, spring and retaining pin gone.   At that moment it hit me that I was a good ways from getting back to a street where I could limp back “home”.   I was also nearly at the highest elevation I would be for the entire ride.  Every route I knew of to get off of the mountain (I was exploring a new area for me) involved a white-knuckler descent.

Well I was not going to get anything fixed if I did not find my brake bits.   The good news was there was only about a 50 yard section of trail from where I knew by brakes were working perfectly to the spot of total failure.   Not too far of a distance, but the trail is only about 12″ wide and dense foilage is all along the edges.  So off in search of I went.

When I was growing up in North Carolina my Dad and I did a lot of hiking and one of our hiking activities was looking for Indian arrowheads and artifacts in argriculture fields and along the river and lake banks.   After tiling and fresh rains was considered prime time for looking for these.  It was good Father-Son times.   Beside it being a fond memory, the point I bring this up is that you develop a skill for scanning the ground and looking for stuff when you do this activity much.   I went into scanning mode and started looking for the brake bits.   I first made a quick pass along the trail just to set my end points and see if I could get lucky.  Nothing on the quick stroll.   The second time down the trail I went much slower and was focusing on just the 12 inches of the trail.   I managed to find one of the pads.   How can I fix this with one pad?  Better keep looking.  One more really slow pass netted me the other pad that was laying about three inches off to the side of the trail and was paritally hidden by leaves.  What a lucky bastard I was.   It had taken about 40 minutes so far and I was not interested in prolonging this anymore.  Time to figure out what to use for the post and spring.    My zip ties were too big and while I had some wooden matches for a retaining pin, a couple of rides ago I gave up all of my tape to boot a friends sidewall so I was out of something easy to hold the matchstick in place.

There is one thing in bountiful supply in Japan, bamboo.  It is nearly perfectly round, smooth and comes in an assortment of diameters.   I stripped a piece of bamboo of its leaves and slipped it into place folded it over and the small end was flexible enough to allow me to use it as binding string.   Sweet!

Now what to do for a spring?   Bamboo to the rescue again.   I got a bigger diameter section of bamboo this time and cut out a section slightly bigger than the normal gap in the pads.   I then split the bamboo, cut to  length and wedged it between the two pad backings.  The folded over piece of post bamboo also served to hold my spring piece in place.   After a few quick tests I was stoked to see the green bamboo was providing enough spring action. I felt confident enough with the setup to not bail on the ride.  I ended up riding about another 20 miles that day.    The following day on my way our for a ride, I swung by a local shop and picked up a set of pads, a spring and retaining pin.   I put it in my pack so I would have a “spare” in case my bamboo should break. 🙂         

Rain Rain Go Away…Or Not

So the weather the past week or so has been conspiring against me.  We made another trip out to Fujimi to get some downhill action in.  Since I had busted up my buddies bike last weekend and my 6.6 has STILL yet to make an appearance in Japan I was planning on renting a full-blown downhill piggy for about $80 for the day.   The rain was just freaking pounding at 5AM in the morning when we set off for Fujimi.  Even though it was only a short ride distance from my apartment to the meeting spot, I was a drowned ratt when I got there.  It is a several hour drive away so we were hoping for better weather over there.

Turned out not to be the case and there were lots of folks at the park thinking about wither to give it a go or not.  A couple of us to decided to wait for some others to get in a run and bring back a condition report.  I rather enjoyed kicking back in the van and shooting the breeze while the others scoped out things.  The group took a very long time to getting back from thier run.   Here is the way things looked.

Some had a little trouble shifting 🙂

Heda reported that while overall the trails were pretty slippery there was good traction in spots, particularly when using your chest.

We debated wither Dan’s riding shorts are 60 or 80 thread count, but we all agreed the inseam-stitching was singlepass.

The consenus was that things were quite slick and while still fun, there was a lot of gingerly riding to be done to get down the mountain.  I was not too interested in dropping $130 total for a rental and lift pass to gingerly go down the mountain so I decided to save my money for another day and chill out at the bottom.  Quite weenie of me I know, but it looks like I’ll be back here before I leave and hopefully when there is some sunshine.

Here are some of the happy but crusty faces from the day.

Micah

Dan

Greg

Before calling it a day, the 4X track had to be given a go.  It was in okay shape but it was wet enough to steal away some speed in the critical spots.    So despite not actually riding it was a fun day and a nice drive through the countryside of Japan.