The Honna-Tsugawa Forest Road: to the Summit

We finally arrived at the end of Route 227, and from there our proposed route, the Honna-Tsugawa Forest Road, promised cycling at once mysterious and alluring, for our exhaustive Internet searches had yielded little definite or recent information regarding road conditions. However, of one thing we were confident: the scenery awaiting us would more than repay the moderate effort we assumed should be sufficient to take us to the top of the Echigo Range. A sign at the Niigata end informed us that we were 22k from the summit and neighboring Fukushima prefecture. At first the road, which along this stretch had been repaved recently, followed a gentle gradient through a tunnel of towering cedars. As we climbed, the surface deteriorated and the cedars thinned, giving way to deciduous species. Now there were long stretches of gravel, and in places several inches of standing water to be skirted. We were riding in our middle gears now, and at the end of the first hour we had managed to cover about 12k. But the nature of the beast we faced was evident to us. We were almost out of water, and the peaks towered far above us. The next two hours were nightmarish. Our lowest gear often wasn't low enough, and at times we discovered that we could push our bikes up the 10% grade more comfortably and as fast as we could pedal them. The track was occasionally littered with rock and other debris dislodged by recent rains. We prayed the next turning would reveal the summit, and swore under our breath (for we had no breath to spare) when we were inevitably confronted by yet another precipitious climb. Though we did not encounter any other cyclists, we did sometimes discover people who had driven up the mountain (some of them in front- wheel-drive sub-compacts!) to gather chestnuts and mushrooms. Eventually we came upon a trickle of water dripping over a rock face, and we stopped to rest and refill our long-empty bottles. The final 3k to the summit was gravel, and the road deeply pitted and uneven. Finally, after 3 solid hours of climbing, we reached the 1,130 meter "Salt Storehouse" Pass. It was 12:30.