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Nichitsu Ghost Town - Sunday, May 6th

Yamabushi

Maximum Pace
Jun 1, 2010
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Due to uncooperative weather the original planned ride was delayed. Here is the updated plan:

Sunday we'll be riding up the Arakawa, over the Green Line descending down into Chichibu. From there we'll be heading out the southwest side of Chichibu climbing up to the abandoned mining town, Nichitsu. Nichitsu at an altitude of a little over 1000m was mostly abandoned in 1978 with the last few stragglers leaving in the early to mid 80's. See HERE for a 10 minute video about the ghost town, and HERE for Tom's ride report from a previous trip there. From Nichitsu we'll climb another 200m before eventually descending back down to #299. Once reaching #299 we'll continue with a long descent back to Chichibu to Seibu-Chichibu Station where we'll hop a train back to Tokyo.

This is a reasonably hefty ride with minimal bailout points and not so many stops, so pacing yourself will be important. All climbs will be wait at the top (WATT). There'll be plenty of climbing, descending, greenery, countless miles of beautiful rindos, and an eerie ghost town to really make it special! If you are capable and interested please, join us!

INFO:
Meet Time: 6:30am
Meet Place: Family Mart (HERE)
Climbing: 2500-2800m
Distance: 170-175km
Route: HERE

This should be a pretty amazing ride with some stuff you definitely don't see every day!! Hopefully the weather will work with us on this one, and I hope to see you Sunday morning!
 
Cool. I will stay tuned. Tim might have something lined up too, right? I has stopped rainning here already and I am hopeful tomorrow will shape up nicely.
 
in reverse

If on Sunday, I will be in the area too :cool:! Will do it "clockwise" this time though so I hope to run into you guys in or around the Nitchitsu haikyo!
 
So Mike got me thinking. For our more southernly located TCC friends, I realize the initial meeting point may not be so convenient. For anyone coming from the south that really wanted to join us on the Nichitsu haikyo part of the ride, you could easily ride from Oume over Ozawa Toge and Chichibu Toge, and join us in Chichibu at 10:45-11am. We'll eat some food at the Chichibu Mecca Shopping Center so that will gives a little flexibility with time. Here is a simple, nice, direct route to Chichibu Mecca for anyone interested: ROUTE.
 
I'm in for till Chichibu.

Tomorrow I will hit Arakawa early anyway.
 
I'm in for some ghost town action :) See you at the usual place @ 6.30am...
 
Forecast for Sunday is now rain, So I will join tomorrow and not this ride.
 
So we are definitely on for tomorrow. The weathers appears to be favorable!

Just FYI, I did a reasonably big ride today so I'm definitely looking forward to having a little bit of a relaxed pace tomorrow. Additionally, I want to get us into Chichibu as easily as possible and minimize the chance of punctures, so if no one has any objections, I'm going to take us over Shiraishi Toge instead of the originally planned climb. It's still a solid climb measuring 6.4km with a 10.5% average grade.

See everyone in the morning! :D
 
If it is easier than the first climb today I am down for it. If not, we can confirm you are a sadist.
 
After todays efforts I'd say you're both sadist's for even contemplating doing it all again in 6 hours.... Good luck. Looking forward to reports from Ghost town.
 
After the Chichibu lunch break we went like you did on Saturday, and climbed up the 299. Because some riders were still building up to the right form and the erratic whether, we turned around and headed back to the train station. Did well over 150k nonetheless. Thanks to the flower festival we had a very convenient train ride back.

Thanks all for the company, and again Pete and Bart for the scouting.
 
Great ride today! I was at the end of my battery by the last climb, though it was a perfect ride to enjoy the Chichibu area and Bartek certainly has some nice routes on hand! Can't wait to get back into my normal 'Greenline Form' and tackle this again!
 
We pondered making the route change to include the Ghost Town. I think this may have dissuaded us a bit as we encountered a group of Walkers.

SBSH0077.jpg


I couldn't help but think that a nice tea of Psilocybe Cubenisis would be the appropriate addition to ones water bottle for this ride.
 
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