A Cyclist's Late Afternoon Delight - Hakone/Tsubaki Line Loop

Today I wanted to swim in the morning, then get in a decent bike ride.

But I got out of bed a bit too late for Wednesday morning Masters' swimming. And I needed to post some materials for students and send a couple work emails ..,  The work took much of the morning. Then I called to wish my father a happy 86th birthday, and started various other tasks that kept me sitting at my desk until mid-afternoon.

So it was after 345PM when I got to Shinagawa Station, way too late to actually ride out to nice territory before dark. I was on the 4:04PM Kodama shinkansen to Odawara, and on my bicycle by 4:45PM, heading up Route 1 to Hakone Yumoto.

As with last week, I took the old road, Route 732, from Yumoto up the hill toward Moto Hakone. Again the road was nearly deserted. I cannot imagine why I did not take this route regularly years ago, instead sticking to heavily travelled Route 1 -- the ekiden route, not to be confused with the Bypass version of Route 1 that does not allow bicycles. Route 1 traffic is so awful that I generally avoided Hakone.  But Route 732 is really nice, based on two different rides up, different days of the week and times of day.

The upper slopes of the hills were full of flowering sakura, even if the lower elevations are now "done" for this year.

By the time I got to Moto Hakone, it was near dark, and the temperature had fallen from 18 degrees C at the bottom of the hill to around 10 degrees C at the top. I could see Mt Fuji peaking through the clouds just over the trees of Hakone Jinja.

Mt Fuji peaking out from behind the Torii of Hakone Jinja

There was cloud cover and the forecast did not suggest it would get much colder at night, so I decided I could climb a bit higher. I rode to the southern end of Lake Ashinoko, then climbed a road up toward the Kanzansan Observatory, I think Route 75.

Another view of Fuji from early on the climb above Ashinoko

The "observatory" looks like a sightseeing location, and no doubt has a spectacular view in the daytime, something like this:

Someone else's photo from Kanzansan observatory

But at night in the clouds, there was no one in sight. There was a sign that said the temperature was now 5 degrees, and I put on my jacket and arm warmers for the descent. I probably could have made it past a sleeping toll booth operator and ridden down the toll road turnpike straight back to Odawara, but I did not want to push my luck. Instead I headed down the Tsubaki Line, a soaring 16 km descent to and then around the edge of Yugawara.

What Kanzansan Observatory looked like to me

I thought about hopping a train from Yugawara -- the station looked bright and cheerful after the dark, solitary descent. But the next local train to Odawara was not for 19 minutes -- and Odawara was less than 20 km away. So I rode my bike. I took Route 740, the "high road" from Manazuru to Nebukawa, passing and being passed by only a few cars over this 9km stretch. Even the last few km in to Odawara were nice.

The ride was only 60km, but it included over 1200m of climbing, and took me up over 1000m elevation. This ride should be great in Fall and Spring, a nice option for someone who lives near Shinagawa Station.

Strava info is here.