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Ride Sunday 12/8: Takao Loop

OPPL200

Speeding Up
Aug 15, 2019
51
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Weather forecast looks sunny and warm (ish) for Sunday, so @Mfebrian and I are planning a loop from Takao St.

Start time: 08:15
End time: varies on option/coffee
Pace: Relaxed

Two routes being considered at the moment, always open to suggestions, advice and of course, recommended coffee stops.

Hopefully more are able to join :)

Route 1 (challenging option):



Route 2 (relaxed option):
 
Yep, I'm down for this! I've only done Matsuhime from the other side - as I remember, the road on the way up was pretty rocky / covered in debris. With the route as it stands, we'd be coming down this. The road on the other side was in great shape for descending.

Haven't been there for a while so I don't know what the road is like at the moment, but I wonder if it could be better to do the route the other way round? What do you think?

Either way, I'm keen :)
 
Either way, i'm in.. Haven't been in a long ride & climb for a while so desperately to try some new route :)
 
I went over Matsuhime a few weeks ago (and at least a couple of weeks after typhoon 19, though I'm too lazy to check).

The south side was a mess. Perhaps a dozen times, we preferred to (or had to) get off our bikes and walk. However, there was only one point where damage was serious, and nowhere was dangerous. Still, I was glad not to be descending through this. (Actually descending to the north was a bit treacherous. It's open to cars, looks like a regular road, and invites speeds of 50+. But there were the occasional stray rocks, and at 50 km/h you only have a split second to notice them. I limited my speed to 40 and was glad that I did.)

A week later, we repeated Matsuhime, again south to north. To our surprise, the road had been cleared up quite radically. Except for the one point (where one side was still blocked by a landslide), it looked like a proper road. We didn't need to get off once.

Despite being both superseded by a tunnel and locked at both ends, this stretch of road is still, I think, officially 国道139. Perhaps this is one reason why it continues to be maintained. But of course you might arrive on it just before a further maintenance, and a lot of earth and rocks could have been loosened by the typhoon yet not dislodged till later. You might encounter junk after recent, smaller landslides.

Once I went north to south along Matsuhime tunnel (the long one, replacing the pass). It's clean, smooth, has little traffic, and (in that direction) goes gently downhill. I rather enjoyed it. I'm not joining your ride; but if I were, I'd be suggesting that you/we took the tunnel.
 
As I'm a bit fatter and slower, I'll let you boys have some time at a good pace before you slow down for me :flip:

See you in Takao tomorrow morning:tup
 
Yes, I think that was my first true TCC experience of riding in the mountains here in Japan :flip:

It was stunningly beautiful in places, freezing cold on the descents and suitably steep on some climbs. The last descent down Takao in the dark, with minimal lighting, was a lot of fun. Throw in some landslide hiking and I think that covers most things, or enough for me at least!

Big thanks to @Mfebrian , @sean-e and @thooms for both providing entertainment all day and being patient on the climbs.
 
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