Trainings Hike, May, 6th

We were in the meantime pretty much used to getting onto the train at 5am in the morning. I had a Starbucks coffee from the convini knowing from the last time that all the coffee shops are still closed. The critical element this time was the rain. The weather forecast predicted a 40% chance of rain and we were wondering if we would get the wet 40% or the dry 60%. To make it short: we got a lot of the wet side of that day! To see it positively: this gave us a great training as we know now how it is with beautiful weather and with rain. We haven't tried snow, yet ....

We (Tom, Hans-Peter and myself) were joined by Kamata-san who we know well from the yearly Renge Onsen ski tour. The plan was to hike from CP7 to the finish - in total about 20km and 1300 meters in altitude. We started at Suruga-Oyama where we tried to see our eager friend from the train station (see training report of April 19th) but he wasn't there. It was raining when we started around 7:30am. We walked up a small valley until we came after about 2 hours to Furoo-san, the mountain of eternal youth. I wonder how young we will feel during the trailwalker event on that mountain after km 80. From that mountain the trail continued as a very beautiful path along the whole ridge towards Fujii-san. Various spots on that ridge must offer very beautiful photo opportunities of the famous mountain. However, this time only our imagination allowed us to see it.

We arrived after about 5.5 hours of a lot of up and down walking at the YMCA Yamanakako. It was raining during 4.5 hours of the total walk and we and our material were thoroughly wet. This allowed us to get a feeling for the hiking on wet terrain and with cold weather. This was at least one positive aspect. The vegetation was beautiful, too, in the rain and the spirit in the team was high.

But to be clear: we sincerely hope that we will have at least for some part of the trail good weather!

Trailwalker Training to Yamanakako (May, 6th 2009)