D3 to Hakuba

Route: Azamino to Hakuba and a a bit beyond
Bicycle: 61 km
Average speed: 15,6 km/h
Total ascent: 785 m
Riding time: 3:54 h
Weather: cloudy, not so windy and quite cold, 11 C

When I planned this ride, I started with the hotel reservations, instead of the cycling routes. Which has led to the first three hotels being actually rather close to each other. Somehow I thought when I was looking at the map that there was a larger distance between them. Thus the basic ride today from A to B was only 41 km and with an elevation gain of only 420 m. I always thought that Hakuba was high in the mountains as it is a famous ski resort, and well it is at nearly 1000 m of elevation, but the valley around it more or less from Matsumoto onwards already is at a quite high elevation.

However I took it easy and took the direct route with the idea that once in Hakuba I could add a few extra kilometers and a few extra elevation meters from here and without my rather heavy luggage. 

Riding here again I took a lot of pictures of mountains. Actually mostly one mountain, the one behind Hakuba.

Wherever possible I took small country road although the main road that Komoot planned for me wasn’t  too busy either. But if I can have a reasonable small road I’ll go with the small one. 

Coming up to Hakuba one passes two very scenic mountain lakes:

I was at my accommodation around 12:00 just at the same time as another guest, and could leave my heavy luggage here. From here I went into Hakuba, a ski resort town but for Japanese standards a very well maintained one. I wanted to eat curry udon and searched for udon on goose maps. The place I found was quite upmarket and didn’t have curry udon (it had soba but had actually run out). However they had an excellent Katsudon. It was crisp and the coating had an intense taste. Never had something similar. 

After lunch I went up a street to a valley and mountain behind Hakuba. A road that leads apparently nowhere (well, probably to a small hotel) up and up. I didn’t make it up all the way, and called it a day shortly after reaching the hight of 1000 m.

A bit above this view if the river I returned downhill and stopped midway through at an onsen. This onsen only has a rotenburo and one would think that it should have a nice view into the mountains instead, no view at all. Surrounded by wooden walls. Not really sure why they might be needed. With a bit of planning this new (!) onsen could have been overlooking the river and there is nothing in the other side of the river. But probably Japanese aren’t so interested in viewing landscape while in the onsen. That’s the only explanation I have why so many onsen in theoretically good locations end up with no view at all. 

Anyway, the onsen itself was nice. A rather large outside pool (just one, but this is more like a small onsen in the countryside) with areas at different temperature depending on distance from the very hot waterfall of onsen waters. 

Cycling back down I came by this commemorative place for the 1998 Nagano Olympics. I had no idea that even Hakuba was part of those Olympics.