CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Hairpins, cedar air and a famous ascent done respectfully. A 55 km loop that starts and ends near Nikkō, about 1 h 23 of riding. It goes by way of Lake Chuzenji and Kegon Falls. Irohazaka ascent is the high point. It tops out at about 1,350 m. The passes are the reason to go.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 3 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go — slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
For about 24 km this is Irohazaka · Nikkō, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
The Irohazaka climbs from Nikkō, at about six hundred metres, to Lake Chūzenji at roughly twelve hundred and seventy, and each bend is labelled with one of the forty-eight characters of the old Japanese iroha syllable poem, so you can tick them off in order like a very steep alphabet. The road is actually two roads, a one-way uphill route built in 1954 and a one-way downhill route added in 1965, so you meet the bends in one direction only and never face oncoming traffic on them.
Read the complete Irohazaka ascent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Irohazaka ascent is the summit of this stretch. Next is Lake Chuzenji.
Lake Chuzenji lies at about 1,270 metres in the mountains above Nikko, and it was made by a volcano. Some twenty thousand years ago, Mount Nantai, a steep cone that now rises to nearly 2,500 metres on the north shore, erupted and its lava dammed the Daiya River, forming this long, clear, deep lake. The water is cold, even in summer, and it is stocked with trout and salmon, and the lake is surrounded by forest. Seen at dawn, with mist rising from the surface, it is a calm and lovely sight.
Read the complete Lake Chuzenji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lake Chuzenji comes up about 3 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kegon Falls.
Kegon Falls drops ninety-seven metres from the edge of Lake Chuzenji into a rocky gorge, and it is counted among the three great waterfalls of Japan. The lake's outflow, the Daiya river, simply runs to the lip of an ancient lava flow and falls straight down, creating a white column in a dark basin of volcanic rock. Around the main fall, smaller streams seep from the cliff face, and in winter some of them freeze into long icicles, a magnificent sight if you can bear the cold.
Read the complete Kegon Falls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 5 km into the recorded legs you reach Kegon Falls. Next is Nikko food.
Imaichi is the quiet partner of Nikko, a working town of sixty thousand people on the plain where the mountain roads meet the Kanto lowlands, and a very good place to eat after the climb to Chuzenji. Some of the trunks are as thick as a small car, and the shade under them is deep and green even at noon.
Read the complete Nikko food write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Somewhere to get off the bike, about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Back to Irohazaka ascent.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Irohazaka ascent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to Irohazaka ascent. That is the ride.
This Nikko food → Back to Irohazaka ascent stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.