Ontake

Last sunday's activities....running up the Ontake Vulcano was a great experience. It's a direct climb of 2300m in one piece, challenging!

First you run a few km on a paved road, but from the start on uphill, after that it's another 2-3 k forest street and small trails. These two parts one can still run, but after that the skislopes start, in direct sun only very steep uphills, almost nobody runs any more, powerwalking continues until the top of the mountain. The picture is from 3080m, the top of Ontakesan. When you made the skislopes, the rocky part starts, with big rocks, where you have to make huge steps. But one gets breathtaking views and at least I enjoyed that part very much. Also the the next few km, running around the calderas is very impressive and if one likes mountains, this is pure joy to run trough and around. It's again about 700m altitude up and down on trails you have to respect and take care for saftyness, but you may enjoy three different calderas, one sulfer smelling - yellowish - one with a blue craterlake and one with a small lake and a snowfield. Beautyful.

After this the most stranious part for me started, the long downhill, again 2300m down to the valley in heat and very steep, mainly like the uphill part.

I finished in 9:00,28, which was 2nd women over 50, 20th woman in total, 298th all in total, I think from all together about 750-800 participants. It was my first race in Japan, wonderful!

Barbara