Date : February 11th 2010
Who : Paul M and Simon
Where : Odawara to CP2
Conditions : Cold, Rain, Fog
Report : Fairly challenging, fairly miserable but character building slog through the rain and fog to CP2. Simon was testing his new boots, GPS watch and Gore Tex stuff. I was trying to remember the trail, and largely failing. Fortunately I had copied the detailed map books from the Trailwalker site to my iPhone, else I think we’d still be somewhere in Hakkone now.
No one else seen on the trail for the whole day. The snow has largely gone, washed away by the rain, but some patches remained near the summit. Lots of icicles hanging down from the trees.
Simon, at this point wearing two jackets
Simon, on the way to CP1
Will add to the general applause for sticks, I mean trekking poles. A huge help on the downhill sections. As CP1-CP2 was mainly a climb up a river of mud, they also helped on the ascent too. My snowboard jacket became waterlogged after about 25 minutes, my “waterproof” over trousers and skiing gloves weren’t, so I was pretty cold and soaked through for the whole mission. Misery was our constant companion, of the heavy, gnawing, lonely, soulful and desolate kind known only to long-haul air passengers and Toyota publicists.
We only made it to CP2 just as it got dark, and had to hot-foot it down some mountain road to get back on to the main road, before catching a bus back to Odawara.
Somewhere near the end of the mud bath of CP1-CP2 the “off” button was nudged on the GPS watch. Only noticed after we got onto the relative dry and warmth of the bus, hence the slight weirdness at the end, but still it recorded great data up until then :
Full data, including animated elevation tracking, at http://connect.garmin.com/activity/24436239