From the Summit to the Tadami River

We rested and refueled for a good half-hour, Don consuming another of his Powerbars while I polished off the remains of a sandwich. The road at this point was composed of small to medium-sized gravel, and we hoped it would so remain for the ensuing 18k. This was not to be, however, for around the first bend we entered what appeared to be an artillery range. Great ruts, bottomless pits, craters, and high ridges turned all but a kilometer or so of the 18 on the Fukushima side into a bone-jarring, dizzying descent. I found scant comfort in Don's assurance that it would have been "an awesome technical downhill on fully suspended mountain bikes." Inexplicably, there were sporadic paved patches of a few hundred meters' length. But we were going downhill, at least. The scenery on this side seemed less spectacular; admittedly, we may have missed much, insofar as to take the eyes off the road (or the hands off the brakes), was to invite disaster. In any case, we wanted more than anything to get to the bottom of this fiendish road. When we saw the Honna Dam on the Tadami River, we knew we had arrived.