# OUT & ABOUT in TOKYO #

On the train early in the morning to meet John and this is what I'm greeted with ... Good morning Mt. Fuji  :))

          Went searching for some new trails today in the mountain ranges of Okutama that are a part of metropolitan Tokyo.  Just one hour by train from the city center,  or if you have a car then expect to take longer because the traffic is chockas ( busy )anywhere over here!  :)

          I met John at the station of Nishi Kokubunji.  From there we went in his car to Okutama Dam.  That's the dam in the background above.  Heavy rain was what we had during the week but today's weather forecast was for a warm and sunny day.  Strange really because we are now in winter.  Today I'm taking elbow,  leg and head protection.  I'm expecting a slippery ride and a lot of crashes!

On the way up the fire road we found this motorbike.  Hope the the person who rode this didn't end up in the rocks too! 

From the dam we had to cycle about 10Ks on a road that runs by the dam to get the road that leads us up the mountain.  Today's mountain is just over 1600m.  From the ridge on top we are expecting to find some wicked trails that will take us to the town of Okutama.  We were looking at roughly 10 - 12Ks of wild fun!!  :))  At this stop here we were sweating so much that we only needed to wear T-shirts from here on ... it was a warm day even up in the mountains.

            From this point we left the fire road and hit the trail.  This isn't an explosion or a fire.  It's a tree that growing from the side of the road.  Can't help but like Autumn in Japan huh  :)

So,  like I mentioned before,  It had been raining quite hard during the week and we expecting slippery trails!  It was basically bone dry up there.  Crazy!!  At least we didn't have any crashes  :))

          It took ages to get to the first ridge.  When we got there we discovered there was another to get to.  Getting up had been a nightmare!!  There were rocky sections,  big bad root sections,  dry slippery pine needle sections and very deep leafy and slippery sections with large hidden rocks lurking beneath the leaves!!  It was a crazy climb up to where we got to.  By this time the sun was an hour away from the tops of the mountains.  We had an hour of good sunlight left.  We had to make a decision.  Keep going and risk getting caught in the mountains in the pitch black which would happen very soon or call it a day and just do the trail that we had so painstakingly just sweated our balls off to climb up!?  We went back down the way we came up!  It was too risky! 

          Going down the way we had just been was a bonus in a way because we new where the good lines were and most of the rocky section was negotiated successfully!  It was extremely heavy on the brake pads though,  it was steep!!

On the way back down we checked out this river trail that ran for a while.  It's a fishing spot and each section had to be crossed over by homemade wooden ladders spanning the river ... very cool!!  :))

Catch ya soon Okutama  :))