Trainings Hike, April 19th, 2009

On a very beautiful day we went for our first training hike. We, the firmenlaeufer team with Tom Nolting, Hans-Peter Musahl, Heiner Pape and myself. We got strong support by the "habituée" Trailwalker Thomas Balk.

Trailwalker Training (April 19th, 2009)

(click on the picture to view the gallery)

Taking the train 5:15am on a Sunday morning is hard - especially since all the Starbucks on our way were still closed! Around 7:15am we arrived in Sengoku in the Hakone area - pretty much in the middle between checkpoint 4 and 5 of the trail. Our plan was to hike until checkpoint 7 - Suruga-oyama which means about 36km and 1200m in altitude. This hike brought us soon onto a beautiful mountain ridge from which one could see mount Fujii very easily. It then went steep downhill to a very beautiful place with the Daiyuzan Saiji-ji temple. From there we had to take a forestry road bringing us to a small village called Yagurasawa. After Yagurasawa we came to places with fascinating names such as the "21st century forest" or the "central square" which is everything but "central". Very beautiful forest trails led us finally to Suruga-oyama.

After some negotiation with a young station manager we could finally enter the super special express back to Tokyo to arrive there around 6pm happy, but tired.